Jason has amnesia. He wakes up on a school bus on the way to the Grand Canyon with what appears to be his very confused girlfriend (Piper) and a bemused, slightly disbelieving best friend (Leo) who both seem very surprised that he can’t remember spending the last few months together at the “Wilderness School”, a boarding school for juvenile delinquents. Not that the field trip to the Canyon makes things better. One of the other school kids sprouts wings, and tries to kill Jason and his friends. The coach turns out to be some sort of half-goat-man and to top it all off, Jason appears to be able to fly, as he discovers when he has to hurtle down into the Grand Canyon to save, Piper, his supposed girlfriend.
By the end of their VERY eventful day, Piper, Leo and Jason find themselves in upstate New York at Camp Half-Blood being told that they are demi-gods and the reason that Piper and Leo can remember a whole semester with Jason is because the magical mist that clouds the minds of mere mortals from the existence of the supernatural basically rewrote their memories when Jason appeared out of nowhere. In short order, Leo Valdez, whose been an orphan since his mother died in a mysterious fire in her mechanical workshop, discovers that he’s a son of Hephaestus, the Greek god of fire, whilst Piper McLean, a tomboy if ever there was one, discover that her long lost mother is Aphrodite, Greek goddess of love, and that the cabin she belongs seems to consist mainly of Barbie and Ken-doll-alikes. Jason’s parentage takes longer to be revealed, but a lot of people get very flustered by his arrival at Camp Half-Blood and this is clearly connected with his sudden amnesia.
Camp Half-Blood’s most famous demi-god, Percy Jackson, is missing without a trace, and his girlfriend Annabeth is not happy. When there is a prophecy revealing that Hera, wife to Zeus and queen of the Greek pantheon has been kidnapped and that she needs to be rescued before the Winter Solstice or all hell will pretty much break loose (someone is opening the doors to Tartarus, the Greek underworld), it seems impossible that the two events are not connected and that Jason’s amnesia and sudden appearance on the school bus with Piper and Leo is not coincidental either. Piper and Leo get called to go on the quest with Jason, whose father is revealed to be none other than Zeus himself.
Leo realises from a vision of Hera that she’s been appearing to him since he was a child, and that his half-blood heritage is the reason his mother died. Piper goes along on the quest, even though she believes herself doomed to betray her friends, as she’s keeping a secret from them. Her father, a famous movie star, has been kidnapped as well, and is being held hostage. If Piper doesn’t trick Leo and Jason to their deaths, her father will be killed instead.
While Jason’s friendship with Piper and Leo may have been a mist-conjured illusion, as they fight a number of mythological challenges on their way to complete their quest, they learn to trust each other and work as a team very fast indeed. Will they manage to save Hera before it’s too late? Will Jason recover his memories and figure out why to him it seems more appropriate to refer to the gods by their Roman names?
More on my blog.
