2.5-3 stars
I kind of hate when I like aspects of a series enough to want to continue reading, even though I don't particularly like the books. The Mythos Academy books are an example of this. I enjoy the mythology and the idea that there are warriors in the world who are descendants of those who fought or assisted in major battles (Spartans, Valkyries, Vikings, etc). I even enjoy the overall storyline - All the good people in the book are fighting against Loki and his reapers to stop another chaos war from occurring. However, I just feel like there is so much superfluous stuff crammed into them that the story doesn't really progress much. I mean, from the time the first book started to the end of this book (book 3 in the series and approximately 1,000 pages later) only a few months have passed but it felt like it took an eternity to get there.
Sadly, most of the filler in the books is "I like this boy, but he doesn't seem to like me, but really he just has a secret that he doesn't want to tell me, but I'm gonna pine over him anyway and then when we kind of figure things out and try to work on a relationship, one of us will do something to annoy the other and we stop talking to each other because we're in high school and that's what we do. Oh, but wait, we're making up again, sort of. I don't know how he feels and rather than ask him or tell him how I feel, I'll just mope instead." I understand that these books are written for young adults and the relationship stuff is probably something they're going through and can relate to, but it wears on me after a while.
The other thing that annoys me a little is that everyone in the book is always telling Gwen how smart she is, but I have to disagree. Yes, she has moments where she displays her intelligence, it's just that I don't always feel like it's at a time that really counts. In every book she either stumbles right into danger (Hi, Preston, the hot boy in book 2 that she couldn't believe was interested in her because she thinks she's not that good looking) and completely doesn't realize it until it's entirely too late, or she is too slow to connect things that she reads/people say until it's too late, assuming she managed to make the connection at all (enter the information about illusions in book 1 and how they seem real in every way until you know they're an illusion). What's more infuriating about the information connecting that she fails to do is that she constantly talks about how her psychometry allows her to remember every single thing she's heard, read, or seen, and she can recall these memories to review them any time she wants. You'd think she'd do this, but instead when she gets an inkling about something someone says, instead of pausing for a minute to call up the memories she has of that thing, she basically says, "Huh...That sounds familiar, but I can't figure out why. Meh, it'll come to me eventually"
I really wish that the books would focus more on the mythological creatures and characters a bit more. As they are, I feel the books leave out so much interesting information about the various Gods, Goddesses, and different warriors, and fail to move the plot along much just to make more room for the sub par love story that feels forced most of the time. On the plus side, we were only reminded of certain things (full names, expensive clothes, and that fact that all Gwen wears is hoodies) a handful of times compared with the previous books.
Overall I'd give this series thus far a 2.5-3 ranking...Not bad enough to hate, but also not really good enough to recommend to most of my friends.