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43 pages 1 hour read

Rick Riordan

The Chalice of the Gods

Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2023

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Chapters 11-18Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 11 Summary: “We Win Zero Prize Tickets”

Hebe did not steal Ganymede’s chalice, but she thinks Iris might have. Percy and his friends can find Iris at a farmer’s market at the Lincoln Center on Saturday. Hebe believes that “behind [Iris’s] rainbow peace-and-love facade, she hates Ganymede more than she lets on” (102), making her a prime suspect. Annabeth thanks her, and Grover asks her not to tell anyone about the chalice. Hebe assures them that she will not; she wants to see Ganymede disgraced when Zeus finds out that the chalice is gone at the next feast. Later, at home, Percy reflects on how helpless he felt being eight again. He knows that if he fails to complete this quest, his future plans could be in jeopardy. When he tells his mother about his experiences, she comforts him and assures him that it is normal for even demigods to doubt themselves.

Chapter 12 Summary: “Ganymede Gets Me a Refill”

A few days later, Ganymede visits Percy at school to get an update on his quest; Percy tells him about his misadventure at Hebe Jeebies and his plans to meet Iris. Later, Percy calls Annabeth via Iris-message, the magical demigod alternative to cell phones. Annabeth knows a daughter of Iris, Blanche, who will introduce them to Iris at the market. Percy has met Iris before, but that is no guarantee that she will remember him or be willing to talk.

Chapter 13 Summary: “We Look for Dead Stuff at the Farmer’s Market”

Grover cannot hide his excitement when he learns that Blanche is coming to the market. He has a girlfriend—a dryad named Juniper—but he admires Blanche’s photography and wants to model for her. He wants to give Juniper some photos as a present. The friends meet Blanche, who is dressed in all black and only wants to photograph dead things. She is aloof, but she introduces them to her mother. Iris is dressed like a grandmotherly hippie, and she sells crystals and incense at her stall. Blanche and Iris have a strained relationship: Iris is the goddess of rainbows, and Blanche only photographs things in black and white. Nevertheless, Iris agrees to speak to Percy and his friends as a favor to her daughter. Percy is briefly jealous as Poseidon never does favors for him. Blanche leaves after setting up an appointment to photograph Grover at her studio.

Chapter 14 Summary: “Iris Gives Me a Stick”

Percy, Annabeth, and Grover explain everything to Iris, trying not to overtly accuse her of theft. Iris would never take Ganymede’s chalice; she does not want to be a cupbearer again, and she pities Ganymede but does not hate him. She will help them find the real thief in exchange for a favor: They need to clean her long-unused kerykeion, her herald’s staff, in the pure waters of the mythical river Elisson. A lot of serpents and other monsters bathe in the river, but Iris forbids Percy, Annabeth, and Grover from harming any of them. They have to hurry: Zeus is throwing a feast in 15 days. Reluctantly, the friends agree to clean the staff. After they leave the market, they realize they do not know where the river Elisson is. Percy will have to ask Eudora.

Chapter 15 Summary: “Yonkers!”

Eudora is pleased with Percy’s progress on his quest. She tells him that if he had applied for “dual-credit” in advance, he could have asked Hebe and Iris for letters as well, but it is too late now. Percy argues that he did not know about the dual-credit system, but Eudora is unmoved. He asks where the river Elisson is. Instead of telling him, Eudora flushes Percy through a water vortex once again. Percy finds himself next to a polluted creek in Yonkers, New York, that disappears into a dark tunnel. In the murky water, he finds a snakeskin and a Fury talon, so he knows he is in the right place even though the river does not look pure at all.

Chapter 16 Summary: “Grover Busts Out the Snake Songs”

Percy returns to the river Elisson the next day with Annabeth, Grover, and Iris’s staff. They enter the tunnel, following the river upstream in the hopes of finding cleaner water. They reach a huge cavern dotted with leafless trees and stalactites. Serpents are bathing all along the river. Annabeth spots an empty location further upriver. Grover promises to keep a lookout for serpents while Percy and Annabeth go upriver to clean the staff. If they hear him playing his pan pipes, he is in danger, and they must hurry. Annabeth and Percy make their way through tall grass to the river. There is no easy way to climb down. As they are strategizing, they start to hear Grover’s pipes. Annabeth pushes Percy and the staff into the river.

Chapter 17 Summary: “I Meet the Man Bun of Doom”

As soon as Percy lands in the river, he meets the river god Elisson, who looks like a yoga teacher. He is furious with Percy for entering his waters without permission. Percy tries to explain the situation, but he only succeeds in making Elisson angrier. Grover’s pan pipes sound increasingly frantic. Elisson tries to drown Percy.

Chapter 18 Summary: “Annabeth Conquers All with Herbal Tea”

Percy is hard to drown, because he can breathe underwater, but the experience of being tossed around the bottom of the river is still unpleasant. Percy gets angry and summons his water powers. He briefly floods Elisson’s river in a violent outburst. When he surfaces, he finds Elisson looking traumatized and Annabeth comforting him with a cup of tea. He realizes that he has managed to clean all the pollution from Elisson’s river, cleaning Iris’s staff in the process. Elisson is shocked and frightened but grateful. In the distance, Grover’s pipe playing sends a message: He needs help urgently. Elisson thanks Annabeth and Percy and leaves. Annabeth formulates a plan to rescue Grover from the snakes.

Chapters 11-18 Analysis

This section continues to integrate Greek mythology references with the modern world. Percy and Annabeth communicate by Iris-message when they are not in the same place. This is a concept introduced in earlier Percy Jackson books. Demigods cannot safely have cell phones because phones can attract monsters. Instead, they call on the goddess Iris to convey their messages. Iris-message involves creating a rainbow with a humidifier and a flashlight and then tossing a golden drachma (an ancient Greek coin) into the rainbow and praying to Iris. This section of the book also makes a brief reference to the Furies, with Percy finding a Fury talon in the waters of Elisson. The Furies appear in other Percy Jackson books; in the very first book, Percy learns that his math teacher is a Fury who wants to kill him. In Greek mythology, the Furies are goddesses of vengeance sometimes depicted with wings. 

As Percy comes to terms with his experiences at Hebe Jeebies, he thinks more about Embracing the Passage of Time. While many people idealize their childhoods, Percy finds that he hated being eight years old again because it was frightening to be powerless. Although he is now happy to be back at his true age, his main struggle is that the future is as frightening as the past. If he is not careful, his actions in the present could destroy his chances of having the future that he wishes for. Throughout this book, Percy repeatedly wishes that he could slow down time, giving him the chance to complete quests and get his schoolwork done. He is not ready for his life to move forward, which is the central tension of his character development in this text. 

Other characters have their own relationships to time. Iris wants her staff cleaned, indicating that she feels some degree of nostalgia about her past roles as a goddess, but she is not interested in becoming a cupbearer again. Like many of the gods, Iris seems to live in an eternal present. She is not connected to the passage of time in the same way that mortals are. Iris does not want to return to the past, but she resists the future, too. The gods represent the status quo: They are immortal, so they do not need to develop as individuals. If they do have something important that they need to get done, they will ask a demigod to do it for them instead of exerting effort. The divine approach to the passage of time is antithetical to a healthy human approach. It is this distinction that Percy will need to unpack before the end of the book.

Percy and his friends once again face mortal danger in these chapters, and The Power of Friendship is what keeps them going, allowing them to accomplish much more than they ever could alone. Percy does not dare enter the tunnel that leads to the river Elisson alone, but he does not hesitate once his friends are with him. Without Grover distracting the serpents with his pan pipes, Percy would never have been able to enter the river to clean the staff. Annabeth is the one who locates Blanche and gets her to agree to introduce Percy to Iris. The three central characters in this story are willing to rely on each other even when things get difficult. When Annabeth pushes Percy into the river, she does so “[w]ith full confidence in [his] abilities, with the rock-steady belief that [their] relationship can handle it” (155). Her confidence is not unearned; Percy does not hold Annabeth’s actions against her for even a moment, even when Elisson tries to drown him. 

Percy faces The Challenges of Being a Demigod as he tries to complete Ganymede’s quest. He feels as though he ought to be more confident in his abilities because he is a demigod, but in reality, he is still a teenager trying to figure things out. One of the most difficult things about being a demigod is having a divine parent. The relationship between Iris and Blanche is a foil for the relationship between Percy and Poseidon. Iris is eager to see her daughter and to do her a favor, though she is hurt by Blanche’s insistence on eschewing color in her wardrobe and photography. Poseidon is never eager to see Percy; it is Percy who would like more attention from his father. Although Percy is jealous of Blanche, it is clear that Blanche’s relationship with her mother is difficult in its own way. They do not see eye to eye, and Iris struggles to accept Blanche for who she is.

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