The Tower of Nero

“When travelling through Washington, DC, one expects to see a few snakes in human clothing.”

The novel’s opening sentence illustrates Apollo’s trademark witty narrative style. The reference to snakes posing as humans is a sarcastic riff on shifty politicians and bureaucrats thronging the corridors of power in Washington, DC. The resolution of Apollo’s joke is that despite Washington being filled with such snakes, the presence of an actual boa constrictor on the train is surprising.

“Outside, the illuminated billboards of New Jersey zipped by: ads for auto dealerships where you could buy an impractical race car; injury lawyers you could employ to blame the other drivers once you crashed that race car; casinos where you could gamble away the money you won from the injury lawsuits. The great circle of life.”

Author Rick Riordan intersperses his fantasy narrative with real social commentary, often delivered with dark humor. Here, Apollo uses irony to describe a particular cycle of consumerism and marketing. The race car, the unethical lawyers, and the casinos are all symbols of excess and a lack of morality. With such values informing life, life becomes a parody of itself.

“It was a bit jarring to hear a Gaulish warrior talking about radar and cameras.”

Juxtaposition is a prominent literary device in the novel, with Riordan often contrasting the ancient and the modern, the sacred and the irreverent. Apollo notes that the universe he inhabits is inherently funny, with centuries-old Gaulish warriors talking about modern-day surveillance technology. Unlike the Harry Potter books, in which the worlds of magic and non-magic are discrete, in the Percy Jackson universe, the worlds are blended.