The Sun and the Star

66 pages • 2 hours read

The Sun and the Star: A Nico di Angelo Adventure

Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2023

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Prologue-Chapter 9

Chapters 10-20

Chapters 21-30

Chapters 31-40

Chapters 41-51

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

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Discussion Questions

Prologue-Chapter 9Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Prologue Summary

Content Warning: This section of the guide references death, PTSD, and forced outing of an LGBTQ+ character.

In a flash forward, Nico di Angelo and his boyfriend Will Solace are weak and injured on their journey through the Underworld. A nymph named Gorgyra asks Nico to tell her a story about their relationship.

Chapter 1 Summary

Nico and Will are the only campers staying at Camp Half-Blood for the academic year: Nico has no family and Will’s mother is a musician touring the country. The camp is a haven for demigods, the half-mortal children of the Greek pantheon. They bid farewell to two of Will’s siblings, Austin and Kayla, who are going home until next summer.

Nico is wary of the darkness he feels inside himself: both his penchant for grumpy unhappiness and foreboding about a voice he hears in his dream. Will manages to make him happier, though Nico’s unease lingers.

Chapter 2 Summary

Nico has told Will about the disturbing dreams he’s been having and the voice he hears. Will carefully asks if Nico’s visions are due to his post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and suggests he consult their camp director Dionysus, known to them as Mr. D. Nico begins to meet with Mr. D every morning; he recounts his dreams in detail, though some are “too painful, too vicious” (18) to speak about.

Chapter 3 Summary

Nico thinks the voice belongs to Bob, a reformed Titan who sacrificed himself by jumping into Tartarus to save Percy and Annabeth a year and a half ago (during the events of The House of Hades). Since then, Nico has felt guilty that they hadn’t returned to save Bob.

Nico dreams that he is next to his older sister Bianca inside the Lotus Hotel and Casino, where they’ve been imprisoned for a couple months. Since time inside the hotel moves slowly, their imprisonment is actually 70 years. In real life, Bianca died while serving as one of Artemis’ Hunters. In the dream, Nico wants to call to her, but his mouth is “a pale line of scar tissue” (22). The dream shifts: Nico is on the Williamsburg Bridge during the Battle of Manhattan (which took place during The Last Olympian). The demigods around Nico tell him to listen. The dream shifts again: Nico relives being trapped in a jar by two giants, surviving on pomegranate seeds that help him preserve the jar’s oxygen by putting him in a death trance (a memory from The Mark of Athena). The jar opens and Nico sees Percy Jackson. Crying, Percy tells Nico he has to fix a mistake they made.

Chapter 4 Summary

Nico’s dream takes him to the moment when Cupid forced Nico to out himself by confessing his crush on Percy in front of his now-deceased friend Jason Grace (events from The House of Hades). Nico hears the voice of Cupid, which becomes Will’s, asking Nico to tell him the truth “when the time comes” (34). Nico wakes up to the real Will, who heard Nico screaming in his sleep. He cries in Will’s arms.

They’re interrupted by the centaur Chiron, the camp activities director, and the current Oracle of Delphi, Rachel Dare.

Chapter 5 Summary

Rachel delivers a prophecy: Nico needs to find who is calling out to him and leave something of equal value behind. Nico tells them about Bob. Mr. D wonders if the prophecy is a trap.

Nico, as one of three demigods to face Tartarus, is determined to save Bob despite Chiron and Mr. D’s warnings. Will wants to go with him, even though he will suffer underground as a child of the sun god. Chiron issues Nico and Will an official quest.

A flash forward shows Nico and Will with Gorgyra, who asks for the story of how Nico and Will came into each other’s lives in return for her boat.

Chapter 6 Summary

Chiron helps Nico and Will pack for their trip, and then the couple takes a train from Long Island to Manhattan. Will has packed a sun lamp to stave off the Underworld’s effects on him. On the train, he tells Nico stories about his travels with his mother and his first time in Manhattan. Nico asks if Will has ever thought about what life would be like if they weren’t demigods. Will is shocked and says no. He only sees the good parts about being a demigod, but Nico recognizes the traumatic aspects.

Chapter 7 Summary

Will and Nico make a stop at Sally Jackson’s house on the Upper East Side, hoping she has a way to contact Percy and Annabeth, who have also been to Tartarus. Nico wants them to give advice to Will on the upcoming journey.

Percy and Annabeth don’t want Nico and Will to go; they barely survived last time and did not emerge without lasting trauma. Nico and Will’s best resource in Tartarus will be each other: The strength of their relationship and stories of their past will remind them of the world above and get them through if they are suffering. Percy adds that they should also try to rescue Bob’s cat, Small Bob.

Chapter 8 Summary

Nico and Will arrive at the Door of Orpheus, a secret entrance to the Underworld in Central Park. Will is nervous about leaving the surface, but he sings for the door to open.

They descend a long set of dark stairs. Nico fights impatience as Will struggles to acclimatize to the darkness. They each think they hear something following them, but don’t see anything. After a long walk, Nico sees the Underworld beyond the River Styx. He turns to tell Will, who is confused and doesn’t see anything. When Nico turns back around, he also just sees more stairs.

They continue. This time, when Nico sees the Styx, he double-checks whether Will sees it too. Will does, but when Nico turns to Will to explain the layout, they find themselves back in Central Park, outside the Door of Orpheus.

In a flash forward, Will can’t remember meeting Nico, which Nico worries is an effect of the Underworld. Nico tells Gorgyra about how they met at camp, which jogs Will’s memory: Nico hurt himself and Will helped calm him down enough to be healed. Gorgyra is fascinated by the memories that bind humans together.

Nico recounts the moment he and Will became friends: After the battle against Gaea, Will requested Nico’s help in the infirmary because he wanted a friendly face around. It was the first time Nico ever felt wanted.

Nico remembers Percy and Annabeth’s advice: Having a partner in the Underworld is beneficial because they could reminisce about memories from the past that drive away despair. Nico is worried about Will, who is deteriorating before they’ve even reached Tartarus. They decide to tell stories for Gorgyra about the moment they each knew they were more than friends.

Chapter 9 Summary

Back in the main timeline, Will is overtaken by exhaustion. They don’t know who is trying to keep them out of the Underworld or why. Nico asks Will to sing for the door again. They hold hands as they approach the Styx again. This time, as they get closer to the river, exhaustion sweeps over them. Will collapses and panics, saying he isn’t meant to be in a place like the Underworld. As Will curls up, Nico realizes they’re on a bed of wet grass, back in Central Park again. He hears Bob’s voice in his head, pleading for help.

Prologue-Chapter 9 Analysis

These chapters establish the physical and emotional conflicts that will drive the plot. In doing so, they also characterize and juxtapose the novel’s two protagonists, Nico and Will.

Nico is a “grumpy little ball of darkness” (12), while Will’s appearance and personality shine as brightly as “a literal ray of sunshine” (13). These natures are partially inherited from their fathers. Because Hades is the god of the Underworld, a realm characterized by death, decay, and literal darkness, Nico feels at home in physical environments with these attributes, though he also internalizes these characteristics in unhealthy ways. His demigod powers also revolve around darkness and death, like his ability to travel through shadows and raise skeletons. Until he meets Will, Nico assumes he is does “not have a heart” (5). While Will is Nico’s partner, he is also Nico’s foil. Apollo is the patron god of many things, including the sun and healing, so Will’s abilities include radiating sunlight and being a skilled healer.

Will tends to see the positive in things while Nico sees the negative—to a fault in both cases. Will never regrets growing up as a demigod because of the wonderful experiences he’s had: saving the world from danger and healing people. Nico looks at similar events and sees their “darker aspects. Loneliness. Pain. Isolation” (63). Nico has internalized these things so deeply that he wonders why Will can’t see them, questioning whether Will willfully sees only “the things he wanted to see” as reflecting “light and promise” (63), rather than darkness. This juxtaposition establishes The Duality of Light and Dark. Despite their different natures, Nico and Will’s connection is resilient. Nico takes their almost year-long relationship as evidence that “the whole saying about opposites attracting was true, because Nico didn’t know a single person who was more his opposite” (5). He conflates his affinity for darkness with more toxic personality traits. However, when he calls himself “empty and dark,” Will corrects him, saying that he may be dark, but “not empty” (13). Nico has an incredibly negative self-image fueled by the traumatic events of his past, but Will’s presence helps melt Nico.

Even before the quest begins in earnest, Nico experiences nightmares that make him repeatedly relive traumatic moments in the past, heightened by “Nico’s own PTSD” (20). This backstory sets up the novel’s handling of Trauma and Mental Health, a theme explored further as Will and Nico venture through the Underworld toward Tartarus. PTSD can be characterized by “trauma-induced recurring nightmares” that “force patients to relive parts of their trauma or design new scenarios inducing panic and stress similar to the trauma” (“Too Scared to Close Their Eyes: Treating PTSD Nightmares.” The University of Tulsa, 2019). Being a demigod puts Nico and his friends in life-or-death situations often; for example, he has had to deal with the premature deaths of his sister, Bianca, and his friend Jason Grace—horrifying moments that torment Nico again in dreams.

One of the dreams forces Nico to relive “one of the worst things Nico had ever been through, which was saying a lot for him” (31): his forced outing in front of Jason by Cupid. Outing someone by revealing their sexual orientation or gender identity is an immense violation of privacy. It causes people to “feel blindsided and forced to reveal a deeply personal part of their identity without their consent and under someone else’s terms” (“Why Outing Can Be Deadly.” National LGBTQ Task Force, 2014). Nico was born in Italy in the 1930s, when gay men were socially ostracized and even imprisoned (Johnson, Alan. “A Gay Island Community Created by Italy's Fascists.” BBC News, 2013). As such, Nico remained closeted until after he left the Lotus Hotel in the 21st century. Instead of getting to come out on his terms, Nico was forced to do so by Cupid in an acutely traumatic moment with a lasting impact.

The novel models how readers should support friends with mental health challenges. When Will notes that Nico’s dreams are brought on by his PTSD, he suggests Nico consult with a trusted adult—in this case, Mr. D, or Dionysus, who has experience with “altered states of consciousness” (16). Greek myth describes how Dionysus inflicted divine “madness” upon people; rather than labeling Nico with a non-specific mental health condition, Will is purposeful in naming Nico’s actual diagnosis—a powerful way to counteract stigma. Even so, Nico dwells on the “implications of Will making such a suggestion” (16)—the negative and offensive connotations of the word “madness” reduces the experience of complex trauma and mental health conditions into a single, outdated umbrella term. While Will is not a doctor, within the realm of the novel, he has medical authority as a trained healer and the demigod son of the god of healing, Apollo. Nevertheless, Will realizes that he is too close to Nico to also treat him. As an “Olympian god with experience in these matters” (16), Mr. D has credentials that are an analog to the doctors, psychiatrists, and therapists properly trained and accredited to diagnose and discuss mental health outside the world of the novel.

As they progress into the Underworld, Nico and Will experience emotional trauma as well as physical hardship. While Nico continues to hear the voice of Bob tormenting him and enflaming his guilt, Will deals with the fear of being a place that is “dark, scary […] surrounded by death and sadness and misery” (78). After they descend the stairs to the Styx the second time, Nico sees that Will’s “internal light had extinguished” (97). Will insists that he can’t be in the Underworld, which isn’t “meant for someone like me” (96). Will’s physical surroundings and emotional wellness are related in this moment: The dark environments affects his psychological state. This challenge and how it affects Nico and Will’s relationship will be explored further in coming chapters.