Demigods and Monsters by Rick Riordan

yet know about. Or it may be that Mr. D isn’t quite as callous as he seems.
    There’s an interesting scene at the end of The Titan’s Curse , where Percy and his friends are on Mount Olympus facing the judgment of the gods. Percy pleads for his life and the lives of Annabeth, Thalia, Grover, and the Ophiotaurus. In the argument that follows—whether the heroes should be destroyed or honored—Mr. D aligns himself with Ares and Athena as one of three gods who abstain from the vote. He points out quite reasonably that Percy may be the godling in the Oracle’s prophecy, the one who will destroy them all. Ares’ decision to abstain seems to stem from the fact that Percy’s made an enemy of him, but Mr. D, surprisingly, seems far more aligned with Athena. He isn’t being vengeful or mad. Instead, he seems calm, clear-sighted, and of all things, reasonably cautious.
    For most of The Battle of the Labyrinth, Dionysus is offstage. When Percy initially returns to Camp Half-Blood he’s delighted to find that Mr. D is away recruiting other gods for the coming battle with the Titans. True to form, Mr. D doesn’t show up until necessary, at the very end when Grover is trying to persuade the Council of Cloven Elders that he found Pan and that the great god is truly gone. Except for Chiron, the council isn’t having any of it—until Mr. D appears, this time wearing a suit and truly sober. He’s grieving for his son Castor and he brings bad news: the minor gods are siding with
the Titans against the Olympians. Still, despite being in a particularly bad mood, he tells Silenus that Grover is right and when the council vote is tied, he dissolves the council, settling the matter once and for all. This isn’t truly surprising; for all the madness, illusion, and intoxication, Dionysus has always been clear-sighted and strangely honest. It makes sense that he, a god of the wild, would sense the truth about Pan and know that Grover fulfilled his search.
    What is surprising is that Mr. D then invites Percy to take a walk with him and admits that Percy and Annabeth saved the camp. When they reach the amphitheater, Percy finds that Mr. D has healed Chris Rodriguez, the half-blood, who went insane in the labyrinth. Being a god who causes madness, Dionysus is also able to heal it. Percy can’t quite believe that the wine god is actually being nice. A sardonic Mr. D assures him that he oozes niceness. As if to prove it, he delivers a very uncharacteristic message: “a kind act can sometimes be powerful as a sword.” And for the first time he tells Percy a bit of his own history as a mortal, how he was mocked for being a mere winemaker and yet became an Olympian. So what gives? Is Mr. D actually encouraging Percy, the camper who so deeply annoys him? I think we can only take Dionysus at his word, and believe that he’s offering Percy, and the rest of us, a genuine bit of hope—that acts of kindness matter, and that we may all have the potential to be greater than others think.
    One of the things I find so intriguing about Greek mythology is that the Greeks saw the positive and the negative in everything. They embraced opposites. I doubt it would have occurred to them to have a divine figure who was purely good and compassionate, like the Buddha or Jesus Christ. The Greek gods always seemed to have dual natures. They were all capable of tremendous good and tremendous harm. They were dangerous gods, whose natures may have been much closer to our own human nature than we’d like to admit. Dionysus is neither good nor bad but spans the entire spectrum of behavior. As one of the Greek gods, he represents an ancient way of
looking at things: that all of Creation, cruel and kind, orderly and chaotic, destructive and creative, is part of the divine.

Why Is Wine Such a Big Deal?
    Wine, in and of itself, is also neither good nor bad. Riordan makes it clear that alcoholism, or an