The Lost Hero

By: Rick Riordan

Narrated by: Sean Welsh Brown, Rainy Fields, Avi Roque

Rick Riordan, the best-selling author of the Percy Jackson series, pumps up the action and suspense in The Lost Hero, the first book in The Heroes of Olympus series.

"Riordan extends the franchise in a logical direction while maximizing the elements that made the first series so popular: irreverent heroes, plenty of tension-filled moments fighting monsters, and authentic classical mythology mixed in with modern life."—Horn Book

A New York Times best-seller

A spin-off of the blockbuster Percy Jackson and the Olympians series, but stands on its own

Combines Roman and Greek mythology

Told from the points of view of a diverse cast of demigods

Memorable characters, witty dialogue, and non-stop action have made this series popular across the globe

Perfect for middle grade listeners but can be enjoyed by older listeners, too

Jason has a problem. He doesn't remember anything before waking up on a school bus holding hands with a girl. Apparently she's his girlfriend Piper, his best friend is a kid named Leo, and they're all students in the Wilderness School, a boarding school for "bad kids." What he did to end up here, Jason has no idea—except that everything seems very wrong.

Piper has a secret. Her father has been missing for three days, and her vivid nightmares reveal that he's in terrible danger. Now her boyfriend doesn't recognize her, and when a freak storm and strange creatures attack during a school field trip, she, Jason, and Leo are whisked away to someplace called Camp Half-Blood. What is going on?

Leo has a way with tools. His new cabin at Camp Half-Blood is filled with them. Seriously, the place beats Wilderness School hands down, with its weapons training, monsters, and fine-looking girls. What's troubling is the curse everyone keeps talking about, and that a camper's gone missing. Weirdest of all, his bunkmates insist they are all—including Leo—related to a god.

Fans of demigods, prophecies, and quests will be left breathless—and panting for Book Two.

©2022 Rick Riordan (P)2022 Disney Hyperion

Voice acting is…interesting

I’ve yet to feel the need to leave a real review for an audiobook, but I’m less than an hour in and I’m very unsatisfied with the purchase.

The male voice actor was a bit much. His tone and pacing felt far too dramatic for much of the narration in the first chapter. But then the Piper chapter started and I couldn’t believe it was real. The audio quality seemed to drop and the new voice actor’s performance and tone was horrendous. I hate being rude, but the neither the voice nor acting was pleasant to listen to.

The previous series had its highs and lows, with the female characters’ dialogue delivery wholly in the latter category. Still, I would take that over this. I think I might ditch this and read it the old fashion way since Audible is missing the next two audiobooks in the series anyway.

I wish I had read some reviews first

My rating for the performance: 5 for Sean Welsh Brown, 1 for Rainy Fields (I’d give 0, if I could), 1 for Avi Roque = average of 2.3)

I understand why the narrator from PJO wasn’t used, he was technically representing “Percy” but the narrators for Piper and Leo make this audiobook version almost impossible to listen to. The narrator for Jason does a decent job, his pace seems a bit rushed sometimes but seems to pronounce words correctly and place emphasis in a sentence and words correctly.

Piper’s narrator… doesn’t use the same pronunciation for a variety of words, and the pronunciations she chooses are often incorrect, she frequently places emphasis in the wrong place, leaves out appropriate emphasis, and sounds like she’s trying to imitate a girl who doesn’t care about what people think of her who is pretending to be a mean girl - it’s so bizarre and distracting that I found myself having to back up the recording to try to listen to 1-5 minute blocks multiple times. She sounds like she’s reading a report in front of a class, with the paper in front of her face and occasionally forcing herself to make eye contact with her audience - she’s just reading words off a page/screen without considering the context of those words and forgetting that she’s “telling a story.”

The narrator for Leo isn’t nearly as terrible as the Piper narrator, but I would find it pretty difficult to listen to an entire book narrated by him. He mispronounces “Leo” like he’s saying “Leah” - and sounded like he was saying “Thea” instead of “Tia” (maybe I wasn’t taught the correct pronunciation for this word?). His pace is a bit off and the tone of his voice is overall difficult to listen to, especially every time he imitates a girl’s voice.

I see others say this should have been narrated by one person because the book is not told from the first person (like the Kane Chronicles) but unlike PJO the story that is told just from Percy’s perspective/point of view, this book takes place from all 3 main characters’ perspectives/points of view, but by a third person (a narrator).

I stopped listening around chapter 20, I’ll have to read it the old fashioned way - which I guess is how I’d have to read the next couple books anyway (and maybe even some of the chapters in this book, based off some of the reviews(?)).

I really wish I had read some reviews before downloading this title!

Horrible narrators

I love the story, but the people reading it were completely awful. It wasn’t even just because of the miss pronunciation of things, or the lack of consistency with the mispronunciations. Not a single one of these three individual narrators used appropriate inflection or pauses in thoughts while reading. It was very frustrating to listen to. However, I absolutely love the Percy Jackson stories, and the heroes of Olympus spinoff.

Great story, pretty decent performance

I almost didn’t start this series due to the large amount of negative reviews on the performance. To be clear, this book has 3 readers that read from the perspective of the 3 main demigod heroes: Jason, Leo and Piper. All in all, I thought the readers for Jason and Leo were great. They read their specific characters excellently. Because each reader also has to handle the other voices within the chapter, they do spend time reading for the others as well. But each chapter is fairly well assigned. Pipers reader I struggled with a bit, I felt she read the part of Piper as a agitated teen voice. Which fit occasionally but not universally. She also was a miss for me reading some of the antagonist parts. I also felt the readers for Jason and Leo, when they tackled Pipers character, her tone, rhythm and demeanor changed quite a bit which I liked becoming it fit more what I thought of her, but made for some inconsistency. That said, to be redundant I loved Leo’s reader. He was perfect for Leo and brought some interesting richness to Chiron’s character as well as some of the others.

The story itself was terrific and the end really lovely. Fortunately I haven’t read the book so the missing chapters (according to other reviewers) were imperceptible to me. Though I intend to write to audible and ask them about it. Because those kind of omissions bother me.

I have heard readers of other books that were straight up deal breakers. Where I couldn’t even listen. The performance here was fine, if a bit inconsistent and humorous at times. I would have preferred a different voice for Piper, but glad I listened.

Terrible Narration

This is a great story. Written in typical Riordan fashion. The three narrators are varying degrees of horrible. Mispronounced words, overly dramatic, sometimes even yelling for no reason

Ok story, adequate male voices, horrible female voice

The story was good, so far as I made it, which was less than halfway. That’s because listening to the female “narrator” (I use this term loosely) was nearly as cringeworthy as fingernails scraping on a chalkboard. She sounded like 14-year-old reading the lines in front of a class as part of an English assignment. There were strange pauses where there shouldn’t be, several mispronunciations, and every sentence she read sounded like it was in ALL CAPS. There is a big difference between reading and narrating. I’m gonna return this to Audible and maybe get the kindle edition and read it for myself.

I love the book, the voice acting.. it’s a no for me

I have read this book myself and thought it would be great to listen to it in audiobook form. The person who speaks for Piper doesn’t even say the Demeter’s name correctly, she doesn’t know how to act and makes Piper character sound like an annoying little brat. This is not who Rick Riordan created her to be.and Apparently Chiron (Greek living in NYC) has a country accent? Who authorized this? Badly done waste of credit I am going to reread the story to reset 👎🏻.

Where’s chapter 48

Chapter 48 is missing. Just goes from 47 to 49. Can’t tell from chapter numbers but those aren’t accurate at all.

Narration

I would have liked to hear Jesse Bernstein on this book. There are a few details that don’t make sense, an example: Jason is a son of the big three, he is 15, and there is no mention of him filling the prophecy from the last five books.

Should have stayed with original narrator

I am not sure why my original book was removed and replaced with this version. I do not like having different narrators. This is not a good way to keep me coming back and continuing my purchases.