The Court of the Dead

The second Nico di Angelo adventure in the Percy Jackson universe, following The Sun and the Star, finds Nico and his boyfriend, Will Solace, navigating a crisis that tests their courage, their relationships, and Nico's ability to simply exist in peacetime.

Nearly three months after surviving Tartarus, the deepest pit of the Greek Underworld, Nico di Angelo, a son of Hades, attends therapy with Dionysus (Mr. D), the god of wine who directs Camp Half-Blood, a training ground for Greek demigods on Long Island. Mr. D teaches breathing exercises and mindfulness, but Nico struggles with the absence of threats. His cacodemons, small dark creatures he calls the Cocoa Puffs, created from his psyche in Tartarus, follow him everywhere. Each Puff personifies one of Nico's emotions and triggers that feeling in anyone who touches it.

An urgent Iris-message, a rainbow-projected video call, arrives from Nico's half sister Hazel Levesque, praetor of Camp Jupiter, the Roman demigod camp near Oakland, California. Hazel is evasive but needs help. Nico and Will shadow-travel to Camp Jupiter, moving magically through shadows for long-distance transport.

Inside the camp, Hazel introduces them to Asterion, formerly known as the Minotaur, an enormous bull-headed humanoid who speaks in an articulate voice and insists on his real name. After being defeated by the demigod Percy Jackson, Asterion regenerated in Tartarus but received no summons from any god. Left without purpose, he discovered a talent for knitting and decided to pursue a peaceful life, inspired by Nico and Will's earlier journey to rescue the Titan Bob.

Five other mythics, the term these beings prefer over "monsters," have followed Asterion: Arielle, a vampiric empousa who lacks her kind's charmspeak, a magical voice power that compels obedience; Johan, a blemmyae, a headless humanoid with a face in his chest; Quinoa, a toddler-sized grain spirit; Orcus, a tiny griffin; and Semele, an eidolon, or possessing spirit, visible only as a wisp of smoke.

Hazel's co-praetor and boyfriend, Frank Zhang, fears the mythics may be manipulating the camp, and anti-mythic graffiti appears on barracks walls. Nico and Will embed themselves in daily training to build trust, but the first joint sparring session collapses when Savannah, a legacy, or descendant of demigods, has a panic attack upon facing Arielle. Savannah reveals that empousai killed her parents by trapping them inside a burning kiln. Though Arielle was not responsible, her presence triggers Savannah's unprocessed grief.

At dinner, Asterion reveals that a threatening voice has haunted the mythics' dreams since they left Tartarus. Then mythics begin vanishing: First Arielle disappears overnight, then Quinoa vanishes from inside New Rome. Nico proposes using the Cocoa Puffs as an early warning system. On the first stakeout night, a mysterious force puts all guards to sleep and takes Asterion. On the second night, Hazel catches the culprit in the principia, Camp Jupiter's headquarters: Laverna, the Roman goddess of thieves. Will erupts in blinding light, and the Puffs attack Laverna, who unravels into rotten ropes, dropping an ID card from the California Superior Court.

Nico, Will, and Hazel follow the lead to the San Francisco courthouse, where Laverna's ID opens a locked door. Inside, each holding a Cocoa Puff to heighten perception enough to pierce the Mist, the magical veil hiding the mythic world from mortals, they discover a torchlit cavern: the Court of the Dead. Masked judges convict mythics for changing their nature. Asterion is brought before the court in chains. The judges reveal themselves: Tantalus, a condemned child-killer; Mary Tudor, known as Bloody Mary; and Pirithous, an ancient Greek hero once punished by Hades for trying to kidnap Persephone. Freed from that punishment, Pirithous became consumed with resentment and founded the court.

Asterion refuses to defend himself and is executed, crumbling to ash. Pirithous then puts Hazel on trial, arguing her existence is illegal because Nico once brought her back from the dead. A rescue attempt fails when a skeletal guard strikes Hazel with a bident, a two-pronged Underworld spear. Before disintegrating, Hazel summons a rain of gems and shouts to Nico, "Don't believe it." Nico grabs Will and shadow-travels out.

Devastated, Nico clings to hope: He cannot sense the telltale void he felt when other loved ones died. He visits Hades's shrine at Camp Jupiter, sacrificing his beloved bomber jacket, and his father appears for a rare conversation. Hades confirms Hazel is alive but says ancient laws prevent him from intervening.

Meanwhile, Hazel awakens in Golden Gate Park inside an invisible cage generated by four dodecahedrons, ancient Roman devices. Asterion, Arielle, and Quinoa are all alive, transported rather than killed. Pirithous reveals his plan: By concentrating hundreds of mythics in one sealed space, the magical pressure will break the Mist and force Hades to appear. Pirithous has been using the chains of Prometheus, massive Stygian iron shackles from the Underworld, to coerce gods and goddesses into his service. Conditions deteriorate as oxygen runs out.

Help arrives through coincidence. Naomi Solace, Will's mortal mother, possesses the rare ability to see through the Mist. She spots Hazel through the barrier and hikes to Camp Jupiter with intelligence about the prison. The camp assembles a strike team, each member equipped with a Cocoa Puff.

The team arrives at the park just as the Mist breaks. The Puffs, which had been enhancing the team's senses, now amplify raw reality to unbearable levels, and the demigods begin to burn. Semele, unaffected, asks Nico's consent to possess him. He agrees, and her consciousness stabilizes his body. The park erupts in battle as Hazel leads the mythics in a breakout while Nico's team attacks from outside. Pirithous traps two gods of trickery, Dolus and Apate, in the chains of Prometheus, but Nico shatters the chains using his Stygian iron sword and the Cocoa Puffs, whom Semele convenes as a "council" of minor gods. The freed twins flood the park with hallucinatory replacement Mist, cycling through absurd illusions.

Hazel pursues the fleeing Pirithous on her stallion Arion and crashes the van he commandeered. The goddess Hecate, patron of magic, arrives to pass final judgment, conjuring a boulder shaped like a throne. Pirithous sinks into the rock, believing he is being rewarded, and falls asleep, trapped once more in his ancient punishment. Hecate orders Semele out of Nico's mind and restores the eidolon to her true form: Semele Thyone, once mortal, later elevated to godhood by Zeus, but forgotten and faded into an eidolon over the centuries.

At Camp Jupiter, the mythics establish a permanent auxilia, a special cohort attached to the legion. Arielle and Savannah, now friends, plan a quest to find the empousai who killed Savannah's parents. Nico and Will return to Camp Half-Blood, where they find Semele reunited with Mr. D, who tearfully introduces her as his mother. The revelation completes a circle: The wisp of smoke who saved Nico's life was the mother of the god who taught him mindfulness all along.

In the quiet of the dining pavilion, Loneliness climbs into Nico's lap. Touching the Puff summons not only the emotion but linked memories: Nico sees both his loneliest moments and the hopeful moments that followed. He settles into the present at last and embraces it like a new friend.