Facing the Wrath of the Triple Goddess: A Guest Post by Rick Riordan
The buzz around Percy Jackson has never been louder — with new updates on season two of the Disney+ TV adaptation to obsess over, the release of Wrath of the Triple Goddess and new readers finding their way to the series every day, we couldn’t be more excited to hear from Rick Riordan himself. Read on for the exclusive guest post from Rick on Percy’s return to the page and how Wrath of the Triple Goddess came to be.
Hardcover $19.99
Wrath of the Triple Goddess (B&N Exclusive Edition) (Percy Jackson and the Olympians)
Wrath of the Triple Goddess (B&N Exclusive Edition) (Percy Jackson and the Olympians)
By Rick Riordan
In Stock Online
Hardcover $19.99
Percy and the gang are tagged to babysit Hecate’s fur babies while they quiver in the shadow of college.
Percy and the gang are tagged to babysit Hecate’s fur babies while they quiver in the shadow of college.
When I decided to write more Percy Jackson adventures, I was just as surprised as anyone else. Actually, there was a motive to my madness—at the time, I was trying to convince 20th Century Fox to adapt the original five-book series into a show for Disney+. As an incentive, I offered to create three new stories that they could use as extra episodes at certain times of the year: Back-to-School, Halloween, and winter break. Turns out we didn’t need the adventures to get the streaming series greenlit, but my publisher, Disney-Hyperion, was more than happy to offer me book contracts for the ideas. And so I was able to return to the original trio: Percy Jackson and Annabeth Chase (now high school seniors), and their loyal satyr friend, Grover Underwood. It has been a blast to be reunited with these characters I know so well and to write in Percy’s first-person snarky voice again. But I have to admit that after being so intimately involved in the production of season one of the show, it was hard not to picture Walker Scobell, Leah Jeffries, and Aryan Simhadri as I drafted!
Readers often ask me whether they need to read all the Percy Jackson books—including the first five, the Heroes of Olympus series, and the Trials of Apollo series—before they turn to his senior year adventures (CHALICE OF THE GODS being the first). That’s a lot to expect of anyone, and so, as I write, I try to clue readers in to any crucial background information without dragging down the action or slowing the pace. These stand-alone stories, set in Manhattan and with slightly lower stakes than all-out war between the Titans and the Olympian gods, don’t require previous knowledge. Whether you’re a reader who grew up with Percy or someone who discovered him only recently through the show, I hope you’ll enjoy seeing him taking on new gods and challenges and making new discoveries about himself along the way.
In WRATH OF THE TRIPLE GODDESS, the challenge Percy faces is having to pet sit for Hecate, the Greek goddess of magic. I had written about Hecate before, e.g. in the short story “Son of Magic” in THE DEMIGOD DIARIES and in THE HOUSE OF HADES, but I’d never had a chance to really explore her. What would her house be like? I wondered. What pets would she have? How would this witch celebrate Halloween? Where would she travel if she could get away for a week? It was easy to imagine the trouble that Percy, Annabeth, and Grover could get into with a rambunctious hellhound and a stinky polecat. And also easy—and scary!—to imagine the ire of a woman who can assume three different faces. I hope as you read the book you’ll see that I had a lot of fun with this one.
Does Percy manage to earn the second of three recommendation letters he needs in order to get into New Rome University? I’m not gonna tell. Don’t want to risk Hecate’s wrath!