percy jackson deserved more

well, you see, it's very simple. coronabeth always wanted to occupy naberius's position but was forced to occupy ianthe's. ianthe got jealous of corona's position and dealt with this by fusing her own soul with naberius. naberius liked coronabeth better but had more in common with ianthe, with whom he shared roughly zero common interests. coronabeth and ianthe spent every day together for 21 years, and during that time developed absolutely no ability to empathize with each other. no one really understood corona like naberius did, which is to say that no one really understood corona. corona tried to understand ianthe, except no she didn't. no one even attempted to understand naberius. naberius was corona's cavalier in his heart, and she was ianthe's cavalier in her heart, and ianthe said fuck you both and became her own cavalier. they had all known each other their entire lives. none of them knew each other at all. they were all sworn to protect and uphold at least one other member of the group. none of them particularly liked either of the others as people. the only one taking this seriously was ianthe. the only one taking this seriously was coronabeth. the only one taking this seriously was naberius. and they all, most importantly, fucking sucked. but god, who wouldn't?

I can think of so many reasons why son of neptune is a top 5 pjo book but a big one is just that the stakes are so fucking high for the entire trio. ALL of them have good reason to believe they won't survive the quest. percy just lost his achilles curse and ella's prophecy foretells that a son of neptune will drown. iris personally told frank that he'll die holding his firewood and then the quest demands that he burns it in order to melt thanatos' ice chains (+he's worried that thanatos will take his life regardless because of his firewood). hazel isn't even supposed to be alive in the first place and the main conceit of the quest asks her to fight to free the god whose very purpose is to kill her. son of neptune is a story about death and the terror of its inevitability. the gang was in a state of highly personalized abject mortal peril for most of that book and there is a very feasible alternate universe in which the quest to alaska "succeeds" and not a single one of them makes it back alive