With A Little Help from My Friends: The Dark Prophecy (The Trials of Apollo, Book Two) by Rick Riordan

To westward palace must the Lester go;
Demeter's daughter finds her ancient roots.
The cloven guide alone the way does know,
To walk the path in thine own enemy's boots.
When three are known and Tiber reached alive,
'Tis only then Apollo starts to jive.

Huh?

Chapter I Lester (Apollo)/ Still human; thanks for asking/ Gods, I hate my life

Being the Sun God used to be a good gig, but when you are on Zeus' hit list, things can take a turn for the worse.

That's right, dear reader.

I, the most important passenger, the youth who had once been the glorious god Apollo, was forced to sit in the back of the dragon. Oh, the indignities I had suffered since Zeus Stripped me of my divine powers. It wasn't enough that I was now a sixteen-year-old mortal with a ghastly alias. It wasn't enough that I had to toil upon the earth doing (ugh) heroic quests until I could find a way back to my father's good graces, or that I had a case of acne which simply would not respond to over-the-counter remedies.

Apollo has been demoted, not just to being a semi-good-looking demigod, but all the way down to mere mortal. Not just that, but the glorious former god of light finds himself ejected from the dubious camaraderie of Camp Half Blood and reduced to having no immortal powers. None. To add further indignity he is now a scrawny, pimply-faced teen-aged boy named Lester Papadapoulos, on a road trip somewhere in the wasteland, the very middle of the Midwest, Indiana, yet, with, of all people, his bossy sister, Calypso. Sure, his ride is a gold-ish dragon named Festus, but the company in the backseat is not what Apollo/Lester might have chosen. Not only that, but his quest requires he discover the secret of the next Oracle or face death, or maybe just life in America's pressure-washed midlands.

If, dear reader, you think Rick Riordan's second book in his The Trials of Apollo, Book Two), The Trials of Apollo Book Two The Dark Prophecy (Disney Hyperion, 2017) is an irreverent tale of the trials of a titan of the Greek pantheon as told by a teenager with a snarky, slangy tongue in cheek and offering much magnificent mayhem from coast to coast, you are correct.

"Sunny," as his dubious traveling aides refer to the former sun god, may have had his immortal GPS system canceled, but he's still quick with a quip, and in this installment of the series, it's one melee' after another, dodging Nero and company, subject to the whims of a teen queen demi-goddess, Meg McCaffrey, as the band of Zeus's minions make their way across North America to complete their quest. Lester gets by with a little help from his friends, just in time to make a promissory peace with the ghost of Agamethus. And, at the completion of this task, is Apollo/Lester met with accolades and the music of lyres issuing from the heavens? No, but he is met with the his favorite satyr, Grover Underwood, bearing a white paper sack of enchiladas from Enchiladas del Rey, the snack purveyor to the gods. But Grover is not there just as a late-night fast-food delivery guy.

"Wait! This isn't Palm Springs? Where am I?" Grover blinked.

I smiled. "Hello, Grover. I am Apollo. And you, my lucky friend, have been summoned to lead us through the Layyrinth."

It's just one trial after another in Rick Riordan's latest adventure with the gods series, The Trials of Apollo, begun in 2016 with The Trials of Apollo Book One The Hidden Oracle (Special Limited Edition). by Rick Riordan (2016-05-24) Written for slightly older readers than Riordan's Percy Jackson books, this trial is obligingly aided by an appendix that helps Riordan's readers keep track of the seemingly endless identity-shifting characters as well as a pull-out leaflet listing "Apollo's Least Favorite Roman Emperors."