The Hidden Oracle

Twelve-year-old Meg is a demigod, the offspring of the goddess Demeter and a mortal. When Meg was five, the book’s main villain, Nero, killed Meg’s father, whom the subsequent books in the series reveal as a gentle botanist named Philip McCaffrey. Nero then adopted Meg, offering her sanctuary and teaching her how to defend herself. Meg has been brainwashed by Nero to believe that the cruel person who killed her father is a separate being called the Beast. Nero controls Meg through emotional manipulation and dire threats. Coached by Nero, Meg claims Apollo’s service, commands him to take her to Camp Half-Blood, and leads Apollo to Nero, betraying Apollo’s trust.

However, despite her suspicious actions, Meg can be kind and thoughtful. She is always in conflict over her loyalty to Nero and the desire to choose the right path. Over the course of their quest, Meg often tries to tell Apollo the truth about herself but fails. When she learns that Nero does indeed plan to burn Dodona, she summons her guardian grain spirit to disarm Nero. Thus, she helps save the sacred grove. Torn by her loyalty toward Nero, Meg releases Apollo from her service shortly afterward and departs to find her stepfather. Meg’s personality highlights the effects abusive parenting can have on children. Meg is depicted as wild, childlike, and rude in turns, almost as if she is unsure about who to be and how to act. However, she is also singularly powerful, is an expert swordswoman who can communicate with trees and nature, and often saves Apollo and others from harm.

The chief villain of The Hidden Oracle and the entire Trials of Apollo series, Nero is none other than the cruel Roman emperor who was infamous for his tyranny and extravagance. In ancient times, Nero simply watched as tens of thousands of Romans perished in a great fire. He was also known for his excessive cruelty in turning the early Christians into human torches and burning them alive.

Aspiring to god-like glory and immortality, Nero has been alive through the ages, unknown by the gods until now. For centuries, he has been building a capitalistic empire called Triumvirate Holdings along with two other Roman emperors, revealed as Commodus and Caligula in subsequent instalments of The Trials of Apollo. Wealthy beyond imagination, Nero may have engineered many wars, such as that between the gods and demigods on one side and Gaia and the giants on the other. Capitalizing on Apollo’s fall and the weakening of the god’s prophetic powers, Nero wants to kill Apollo, seize all the Oracles, and gradually establish his dominion over the world.

Nero is depicted as a bearded, weak-chinned man with a love for opulent, flashy clothes. The worst aspect of Nero’s personality is his control over Meg, his adopted daughter. Nero uses Meg as his minion in exchange for a veneer of protection. He often threatens her with unleashing “the Beast,” his cruel and evil side that killed Meg’s father, if Meg does not do his bidding. Thus, Nero ensures Meg’s obedience. After his plan to burn the Grove of Dodona and to destroy Camp Half-Blood using an animated Colossus fails, Nero abandons Meg and flees to safety, revealing his cowardly nature.

As vicious as he is cute and cuddly in his diaper, Peaches is a baby-like karpos or ancient grain spirit who protects Meg. First inadvertently summoned by Meg in a moment of danger in a frozen peach grove, Peaches only appears when Meg is in genuine peril. Initially, his vocabulary is limited to the word “Peaches,” but after spending time among the talking trees of Dodona, Peaches learns terms like “apples” and “linguine.” Funny, feral, and dangerous, Peaches represents the raw power of nature, as well as Meg’s innermost, child-like self.

The son of Sally Jackson and the oceanic god, Poseidon, Percy Jackson is the protagonist of the five-part Percy Jackson and the Olympians series. Percy has the power to manipulate water. In The Hidden Oracle, he makes brief but important appearances, such as when escorting Apollo and Meg to Camp Half-Blood and joining the fight against Nero’s Colossus. Though Percy initially seems too preoccupied with his own life to help out Apollo, his reappearance toward the end reflects Percy’s helpful nature.

In Greek mythology, titan queen Rhea was sister and wife of the cruel god Kronos, known for eating his own children. Rhea is an older-generation goddess of fertility and comfort, and the mother of Zeus. The daughter of Gaia, Rhea planted the Sacred Grove of Dodona as a young girl. In The Hidden Oracle, Rhea appears as a quirky Bohemian feminist who wears a peace sign and runs a pottery studio in Upstate New York. A benevolent force, Rhea appears in Apollo’s dreams and urges him to find the Grove of Dodona. Later, she gives Apollo a set of wind chimes to interpret the prophecy of the trees and alerts Apollo to the evil designs of Triumvirate Holdings.