
Authors Rick Riordan and Mark Oshiro have a new book in their Nico di Angelo Adventures series, and they spoke to ScreenRant ahead of the book’s release. The Court of the Dead: A Nico di Angelo Adventure, the second book in the series and sequel to The Sun and the Star, find demigods Nico di Angelo and Will Solace joining forces with Nico’s half-sister Hazel Levesque at Camp Jupiter on the West Coast.
The book ties into the wider Percy Jackson universe, but Riordan and Oshiro revealed that it expands the world in a way that helps recontextualize Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief. Namely, it adds nuance to the depiction of monsters and turns them from black-and-white henchmen to sympathetic characters. This time, they’re the ones protecting monsters:
Screen Rant: The theme that we seem to be circulating around is reevaluating characters in this book. Particularly with monsters, we’re questioning whether or not all monsters are heroes, or whether all heroes might have some monster tendencies. There’s a line from former monster: ‘We were forced to serve Kronos and after that Gaea, we weren’t given much of a choice in their terrible wars.” Do you feel like you both have given a bit more color to what arguably are just henchmen in the original Percy Jackson pentalogy, The Heroes of Olympus pentalogy? With that in mind, do you think if we go back and reread those books, we’ll view any of those monsters a little differently after reading this book?
Mark Oshiro: First of all, did you write that Rick? Did I write that? I remember it.
Rick Riordan: As with so much of it, I have no idea. Yeah, the pros, I mean, is so much a hybrid of the two of us that it’s so difficult to remember who wrote how much of each line. But to your question, I mean I certainly hope that’s the case. I mean, I don’t think I could go back and read The Lightning Thief without thinking of The Court of the Dead and the poor Minotaur with nobody commenting on how nicely he did the stitching work on his [underwear], I mean, come on. We didn’t even ask the guy if he could speak.
What This Means For The Larger Percy Jackson Universe
As with so many fantasy books geared at children, the morality of the Percy Jackson universe was always something of a black and white binary. But as the original audience of the books has grown up, and modern kids are more adept at engaging with nuanced storylines, the Nico di Angelo Adventures has a chance to add more depth and richness to the world. As Mark Oshiro chimed in, it’s the messiness in between that makes it so much more engaging:
Mark Oshiro: “Yeah, I know where it was also coming from is one element that was really fun in The Sun and the Star. I think that was, for both of us, this chance to sort of peel back the curtain on the monsters anyway, because you have the people who are working, in case people have not read it, for the big bad – I won’t say who it is – and even getting to explore them.
I remember there was that early moment that – again, I don’t remember quite who came up with it – where Nico or Will compliments one of the demons and is like, ‘You did a really good job.’ And just that being treated like a person in that moment is what affected them later to be like, ‘Actually I kind of support them.’ And I think that was sort of this grain that we unconsciously put into the series of, hey, even though they’re in this very scary situation, and the demigod solution is you kill monsters, they didn’t. They found a solution that didn’t have anything to do with that.
What if this book is that on a greater scale? What if the solution isn’t this, and how do we rethink punishment? What does justice mean for these characters? Some of them have been harmed by creatures, some of them are creatures who’ve never harmed anyone. I don’t know. It’s kind of like the messy, I was going to say messy camp counselor student, but that’s also just Camp Jupiter in general. But it’s like a new level to that of going, well, let’s take this to a place we haven’t quite seen before in this series and see what happens.”
Our Take On The Recontextualizing Of Percy Jackson’s Monsters
While children’s fantasy, is great escapism and wonderful for the imagination, it doesn’t always leave much room for building empathy. There are good heroes and there are bad villains, and there’s not much in between. The villains are always evil, through and through, with few, if any, redeeming qualities. And henchmen are just disposable redshirts that rarely get fleshed out and given agency and dimension of their own.
It appears with the new series, those henchmen will finally have a voice of their own. It’s a more accurate reflection of real life: few people are all good or all evil. Most of us have varying shades, and those shades can differ depending on whose perspective lens we’re being viewed through. At some point in every one of our lives, we’ll all appear as the villain, or at least minor antagonist, in another person’s story.
Oshiro’s reminder that some of these monsters have never hurt anyone is a good foundation to anchor the new series in. Some of them are labeled monsters because they’re born as them, but they don’t do monstrous things and they deserve to be treated with compassion and understanding. The Court of the Dead: A Nico di Angelo Adventure will continue this new dynamic and make the universe all the richer for it.
The Court of the Dead: A Nico di Angelo Adventure is available in stores and for digital purchase on Tuesday, September 23.

- Created by
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Rick Riordan
- First Episode Air Date
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December 19, 2023