“I deserve a little party,” I told myself. Perhaps I could watch the upcoming film this Saturday, Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief. But then I remembered that weekends meant crowds would swarm into the mall, and probably I would have to endure long lines. Waiting is one thing I hated. Instead, I spent Saturday morning—dawn actually—on the internet downloading Percy Jackson ebooks. Why dawn? The wifi signal is strongest at this time of day.
I immediately opened The Sea of Monsters,the first one to be downloaded. The first page got me hooked instantly. The story was an edge-of-your-seat action in a rib-cracking comedy. That’s not all. I felt like I was in the action, not just an observer from a high tower. The first-person point of view pulls me from my room into Camp Half-Blood itself, and I join Percy and Annabeth and Grover in the quest. I felt sad about Chiron, as Percy and Annabeth were, too. I don’t know much about this Chiron character, but the power of Percy’s narration caused me to grieve over Chiron’s dismissal as Activities Director.
How the narration caused me to feel how the characters felt, I don’t know. Perhaps it was the POV. Or the language. The language used was the language of my time, my generation. Percy described things the way any teen would. He used stuff, thing, this guy, huge…you get the idea. Not the poetic type of description you’d find in Harry Potter. I mean, look at how one place is described in HP and compare it with Percy Jackson. Harry Potter novels sound like this:
The river’s brackish waters flowed quietly, plastic wrappers and bottles going
Percy Jackson doesn’t sound like that. The book would be more like this:
The river has mucky waters, and lots of stuff flowed with it—plastic bottles and wrappers. Then there’s this fox that drank at the edge. It cocked its hd when it heard cloaks swishing. It listened attentively.
I am a Literature major, sure, and am trained to appreciate the beauty of adjectives and stuff like that, but hey, I’m a typical teen who is drawn to the language of her time.
Going back to The Sea of Monsters, I couldn’t wait to know what happened after Percy and Clarisse joined forces and the next and the next. The action kept me glued to the story. Then when it ended, I was happy and excited to begin another book.
I read The Lightning Thief next. I was kinda rebooted. I knew Percy’s beginnings—ADHD, dyslexia and all that. Like Book Two, I was glued from page one to the end. I never wanted to leave my computer. I concentrated in class, of course, and I did my homework before anything else. But my longing to continue joining Percy’s quest made me wake up at four-thirty in the morning so I could read (evenings are for school work and I call lights out at ten). I read the novel until eight o’clock, when I’d close my laptop and walk to school for my 8:30 class.
The same excitement prevailed while reading Book Three, The Titan’s Curse. The adrenaline rush I felt was leveling up, since the story was getting action-packed than ever. It hit a different level in Book Four, The Battle of the Labyrinth, where things were kind of hanging. I understood why the story “hung.” The book was preceding The Last Olympian, which would tie up loose ends. Therefore, the author pumped suspense into his readers first before telling the story of Book Five.
The Last Olympian’s schedule of reading, luckily, fell on a Friday. It was another clear weekend. I devoured the book as a hungry predator would do to a prey, and I finished the book—and the series by Saturday evening. I was very excited, reading this book. It was the culminating story of the Percy Jackson series, and the rush that I felt when reading Deathly Hallows came back. I couldn’t describe it here; it is beyond words. I suggest you read the books to know what I mean.
Reading Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson series reminded me of Harry Potter in some ways:
1. Percy Jackson and Harry Potter live in the normal world, where they do things that get them into trouble. Then one day they learn that they’re special, and that another world exists aside from the mortal world they are in.
2. A prophecy about them is made and the prophecy says that the subject holds the fate of the world in his hands.
3. The main villain is a powerful evil guy who was once defeated and is rising again.
4. The hero is trained by a mentor who gets very close with the protagonist.
5. A spy for the main villain is in the midst of the protagonist’s camp. The villain stands by the protagonist in the end before he dies.
6. The protagonist has an arch-enemy in the form of his fellow camper/student and they become allies in the end.
7. The mentor of the main protagonist is chucked from his position due to an alleged crime then is reinstated later.
8. The training ground of the protagonist is concealed to normal people.
I admit that I am saddened by the fact that The Last Olympian concludes the Percy Jackson series. I have some questions, like, what became of Chiron after that? What about Paul and Sally? And the new prophecy? Being a writer, I know pretty well that the end is the end. I’ve been trained to never write more than what I have to. I must start with a bang and end with a blast. And that’s what Rick Riordan did.
If anything, reading the Olympian series made me appreciate Greek mythology all the more. I love Greek mythology—I’ve got the Iliadand the Odyssey—and the five Riordan books reinforced the appreciation I have. If I were a kid who says “Who cares” to a boring lecture in Greek history, this series would change the way I look at it.
The way of presenting Greek mythology in a form of a novel is way, way cool. Brilliant, if you ask me. And it makes sense. The power of the West moves: Greece to Rome to England and now the States. What if, indeed, Mount Olympus is in New York? That’s a catchy beginning. Something that’ll really catch your attention. And the ending—the all-is-well type—the way it was presented, it was a bang.
I have only one sentence to say to the author of Percy Jackson and the Olympiansseries: Excellent work, Mr. Riordan!
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