Percy Jackson: Rick Riordan Teases Flashbacks, Familiar Locations in Upcoming Spin-off Book

Percy Jackson is having a moment in 2023. The new year kicked off with Percy Jackson and the Olympians wrapping production on Season 1, adding a couple of godly characters along the way. The Disney+ adaptation of Rick Riordan’s best-selling books has since entered post-production and is expected to arrive sometime in early 2024. In the meantime, fans have two new books from within the Percy Jackson novelized universe to look forward to: May’s The Sun and the Star and September’s Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Chalice of the Gods.

While specifics on the latter remain close to the vest at this time, Riordan and co-author Mark Oshiro are gearing up for the former’s release. With less than one month until the Nico di Angelo-led spin-off story hits bookshelves, Riordan took to TikTok to reveal the first copy of The Sun and the Star.

The book’s cover is familiar to fans, as it is the same cover artwork that Khadijah Khatib designed back in September 2022. From there, Riordan flips through a couple of pages, revealing a “specially-marked” part of The Sun and the Star which he teases will be “some sort of crazy flashback.”

The opening flap of The Sun and the Star features a map that continues on the back of the book as well. Spotted locations on the map include Persephone’s garden, Sally Jackson’s apartment, Hades’s palace, and the River Styx.

Upon opening to the beginning pages, Riordan revealed that The Sun and the Star is dedicated “to all the Nicos, Wills, Pipers, and everyone in between.”

This book reveal is just the first of many that are set to unfold for The Sun and the Star over the next month. Riordan and Oshiro will embark on a book tour that is set to stop in Boston, New York, Atlanta, San Francisco, and Toronto in the first week of May.

“It will be a treat to travel and talk with fans in person for the first time since 2019,” Riordan wrote on his blog. “It will be even more fun because this is the first tour I’ve ever done with a co-author, so you’ll get to see Mark Oshiro and me together on stage in conversation, giving you the inside story about how this Nico di Angelo adventure came to be created.”

The Sun and the Star hits bookstores on May 2nd.