The Sun and the Star: A Nico di Angelo Adventure

Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2023

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Prologue-Chapter 9

Chapters 10-20

Chapters 21-30

Chapters 31-40

Chapters 41-51

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

Beta

Discussion Questions

Literary Devices

Allusion

Allusions are “textual references to an object or subject that exists outside the text. They use readers’ prior knowledge and associations to enhance emotion or clarify significance” (“Allusion.” SuperSummary). Allusions are one of the most frequently used literary devices in Riordan’s work.

The Camp Half-Blood Chronicles are inspired by Greek mythology. This tradition was established by works such as Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, Ovid’s Metamorphosis, and Hesiod’s Theogony, among others. Allusions to Greek mythology enrich the content of the novel in myriad ways. For instance, Nico and Will enter the Underworld through the Door of Orpheus. Orpheus was a musician who descended to the Underworld to rescue his wife, Eurydice. The reader who recognizes this allusion knows that Orpheus failed in his mission, which heightens the tension of Nico and Will’s quest for Bob.

The novel’s most obvious allusions are to the demigods’ Olympian parents, which explain how those gods’ natures and powers characterize their demigod children. Apollo, Will’s father, is the god of light, sun, music, poetry, healing and disease, and prophecy. Will inherited powers related to light, the Sun, music, healing, and disease; he laments that he isn’t proficient at archery, another of his father’s skills. Hades, Nico’s father, is the god of dead and king of the Underworld. In Greek myth, he is not seen as negative, much as Nico does not see death and darkness as inherently bad things. While stern, Hades is balanced, meting out punishment equitably. This mirrors how Nico pays attention to people other demigods forget, like Bob and the trogs.

Flashback

A flashback is a literary device in which the narrative diverts from the main story’s timeline to show the reader something that happened in the past. This is one of two disruptions to the temporal setting in The Sun and the Star. Unlike flash forwards, flashbacks show Nico and Will’s most negative or traumatic memories and help build the theme of Trauma and Mental Health. The co-protagonists experience flashbacks in the form of nightmares sent either by the god of nightmares, Epiales, or the goddess of night, Nyx.

While most of the book is printed on white paper, flashbacks are printed on pages that are gray and cloudy. The degree of gray is proportional to how traumatic the accompanying memory is. For instance, Nico’s retelling of his time in Tartarus is on the darkest pages in the book. This visual cue is a useful tool for the reader to see how a given flashback affects someone.

Flash Forward

A flash forward is a literary device in which the narrative diverts from the main story’s timeline to show the reader something that will happen in the future, either later in the narrative or after the events of the book entirely. The Sun and the Star contains flash forwards of Will and Nico speaking to the nymph Gorgyra. Eventually, the main storyline catches up to these flash forwards. Unlike the flashbacks, in which Nico and Will relive traumatic memories, the flash forwards feature their happy memories. The strength they get from reliving these parts of their past is vital as they journey through Tartarus.

The flash forwards serve two main narrative purposes. The first is to create narrative tension. The book opens with a flash forward. Will’s bandages are “soaked through with blood” (1) and he can’t grasp Nico’s hand. This danger compels the reader to keep reading to find out how Nico and Will wound up like this and whether they survive.

The second purpose is to characterize Nico and Will’s relationship. Nico and Will were important side characters in previous books, but the specifics of their developing relationship were not central to any previous narrative. Through the flash forwards, readers can see the progression of a healthy, loving, and realistic relationship. Readers witness Nico and Will meeting, the first moment they had romantic feelings, Nico asking Will out, and their first kiss. Seeing physical romantic affection between a gay and bisexual teen in a relationship is particularly important for representation, as historically, media sterilizes LGBTQ+ relationships by censoring their physical affection, while depicting kisses and other physical affection from straight couples (Myers, Maddy. “Just Let Them Kiss: The Line Between Sexualizing and Sterilizing Same-Sex Romances in Media.” The Mary Sue, 2016).

Humor

Humor is a literary device used to make audiences laugh or to elicit feelings of levity and amusement. Humor is often used strategically by authors, either to make a political or social point or to break up the pacing of the text. The Sun and the Star is a middle grade novel that deals with serious themes, like Trauma and Mental Health. Will and Nico are teenage boys who face constant threats to their lives and the lives of the people they love. They experience unspeakable horror in Tartarus that they know will affect them for the rest of their lives. Oshiro and Riordan used humor “to deflate terror without negating it,” which is important for young readers: “We have to find the humor in things to survive the grim moments” (Ulatowski, Rachel. “‘Percy Jackson’ Spinoff ‘The Sun and the Star’: Rick Riordan & Mark Oshiro Interview.” The Mary Sue. 1 May 2023). Humor and fear are both very human emotions; they seem oppositional, but paradoxically, they can exist at the same time—much like light and dark. When Nico and Will survive their drop into Tartarus, Will begins laughing uncontrollably. Nico starts laughing along with Will as the “enormity of what they’d just survived hit him, and the only thing he could do was laugh” (294). This moment shows how Will and Nico are, as Riordan says, finding humor in their situation to survive the grimness of the moment.

While this moment shows how Nico and Will use humor to survive, Riordan and Oshiro also insert humorous moments that are primarily meant to be funny to their middle-grade reader. They often rely on word play, and sometimes bathroom humor, to entertain their readers. After entering Tartarus, Will thinks about how the air smells like “rotten eggs left out in the sun, then blended with dog poop, then put back out into the sun” (296). It makes sense to the reader that Tartarus smells like sulfur, but Riordan and Oshiro put a humorous spin on the sensory description to appeal to young readers.