Add to this that I'm an impulse buyer who likes interesting packaging, and you can work out how I ended up with a paperback copy of The Lightning Thief: Percy Jackson and the Olympians Book 1. (Oddly enough, I also dig young adult fiction, so that's a factor as well.)
Story
The story goes down like this: Percy Jackson is a 12 year-old "troubled child" with dyslexia and ADHD who finds it hard to concentrate, sit still, learn Latin, control his temper and not get expelled. (When we meet him, he's in the sixth grade at the Yancy Academy, his sixth school in as many years.)
Percy almost gets killed a few times, discovers he's a demigod (the half-human son of a Greek god), tries to stop the obliteration of Western civilization and has to deal with one heck of a dysfunctional family.
Potter parallels
I'm starting to think it make be difficult these days to find a coming-of-age Y.A. adventure story without a few Harry Potter parallels. The Percy Jackson series has its fair share:
- Young, misfit boy discovers his inner awesomeness. Percy learns special and there are other people like him right around the same age Harry did.
- It takes a trio to save the day. Percy's pals include another demigod's daughter known for always having a plan and a mythical woodland boy-creature who has a good heart, loyal to friends, and ambitious, but is kind of a big lug.
- Other worlds have bad guys, too. When Percy makes his way to camp (the safe place where the other demigods train to attain their best demigod-ness), he runs afoul of Clarisse, daughter of the war god and her siblings, thus casting our series' Malfoy and Slytherins.
- Being dead isn't necessarily permanent. Let's just say the little-bit-less-than-completely-dead Titan Kronos is Percy's Voldemort
Read and learn
Since Percy is pretty much the last person to know he's part Greek god, he's got a lot of catching up on family history to do.
Percy's first-person narration breaks down the Greek mythology in manageable chunks. The story of Kronos and his kids becomes something like "Kronos was scared that his kids would overthrow him so he ate them all. But Zeus tricked him into eating a rock and got him to barf up all his brothers and sisters." NIce and simple, if gross.
Author Rick Riordan also makes Percy such an authentic character in such a well-told story that while rooting for him, you find yourself trying to help him. Even though I haven't tackled Greek Mythology since college (at the most recent), I was searching my brain to remember everything I'd ever read about mythology to figure out who was related to whom, why the kids from the Ares kids were suck bullies, and who Mr. D, the director of Camp Half-Blood, really was and why not being able to drink wine would be considered a punishment ...
Nit-picking
I have only one complaint. Well, one and a half. Percy is 12 years old when we meet him. For the most past, he talks like a 12 year-old, which makes the story fun to read. And because of that, it's a little like hitting an unexpected speed bump when a kid who's been talking about "the deep pit" or "the huge hole" suddenly breaks out with "the chasm." That raised the Editor flag for me. It just didn't seem like something Percy, or any other sixth-grader, would say. I fully admit that I'm nitpicking on that score, but I figure if I noticed, then it's noticeable, right?
The half-complaint is names. Percy, Annabeth and Grover are fine. But Chiron? Hephaestus? Um, what with the who, now? Nothing interrupts the flow of a good book like tripping over a name. But, that's what the online version of Merriam-Webster English dictionary is for. You can hear the words spoken. And now I (re)learned how to pronounce the names of the Greek gods. So that's why it's only a half-complaint.
In or out?
Books: I am definitely in! I breezed through the 300-odd page Lightning Thief and The Sea Monster, the second book in the series, in just under two days. I started The Titan's Curse this morning. I would have finished it, too, except I had to go to work.
If you're a Potter fan, check out the Percy Jackson books. You'll find the same morals about being true to yourself, and the importance of love and friendship, and you'll also find yourself firing up your computer to Google the gods because you really can't let a comment describing World War II as "a battle with Zeus and Poseidon on one side and Hades on the other" go by un-Wiki-ed.
Movie: Well, yeah. I guess. I mean, there is all sorts of potential for crazy CGI monsters and huge Hollywood-sized blockbuster water works. But, you know what? It would be wicked cool if theaters brought Book 1 with special PJ blue popcorn! And if they ponied up for ballpoint pens? Maybe a Yankees cap and reed pipes? That would be sweet! Like, really.
(Read the books!)
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