ACTUAL RATING: 2.5 STARS*

Sometimes I think Rick Riordan is just writing for the money. And I really, really, really hope this isn’t true, but in the case of The Demigod Diaries, it really makes me wonder. This collection isn’t bad, but it’s not particularly good or compelling either.

Usually, people read Rick Riordan for the adventure, not for his gorgeous prose, and these stories are no exception. It’s all action, all the time. That's not necessarily a bad thing, especially when the target audience is young boys, but in these stories, Riordan seemed to have lost his flow. Everything seemed to come to a resolution too quickly and too easily.

Even with his constant stream of action, I was easily bored when reading these stories. Some of them were just not captivating. It could be that they were written too similarly to his other stories (one of the weak points in Riodan's writing is that he uses the same trophes over and over again), but it seems to me that Riordan just didn’t spend that much time and effort writing these stories. 

My favorite short story out of these four was “Percy Jackson and the Staff of Hermes,” but I might be biased because this was the one about Percy and Annabeth on their date. I absolutely adore Percy and Annabeth together and will take them in any form. I loved seeing their relationship develop in this story, but one thing that bothered me was the characterization. There was something off about how Riordan wrote Annabeth; he made her seem too much like a typical girl. After reading The Mark of Athena and coming back to revisit this story, it seemed to me like Riordan wasn’t writing his own characters in cannon.

Overall, this compilation was mediocre. The only story worth reading was “Percy Jackson and the Staff of Hermes.” I would only recommend this book (or audiobook) to die-hard Percy Jackson fans. Otherwise, just read the main series; those are more worth your time.