Rick Riordan is the author of the #1 New York Times bestselling Percy Jackson and the Olympians series. He lives in San Antonio, Texas, with his wife and two sons. To learn more about Rick, visit his website at www.rickriordan.com. You can find more of my reviews of Rick's works here.
Percy Jackson is about to be kicked out of boarding school . . . again. And that's the least of his troubles. Lately, mythological monsters and the gods of Mount Olympus seem to be walking straight out of the pages of Percy's Greek mythology textbook and into his life. And worse, he's angered a few of them. Zeus's master lightning bolt has been stolen, and Percy is the prime suspect. Now Percy and his friends have just ten days to find and return Zeus's stolen property and bring peace to a warring Mount Olympus. But to succeed on his quest, Percy will have to do more than catch the true thief: he must come to terms with the father who abandoned him; solve the riddle of the Oracle, which warns him of betrayal by a friend; and unravel a treachery more powerful than the gods themselves.
Fans who return to the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series more or less know what they're getting themselves into when rereading. Percy is a hilarious first-person narrator, which means a story that is essentially guaranteeing an entertaining read. Even in the face of death, he still has enough humor in him to crack a joke—who doesn't like Percy as a narrator? What some avid fans might forget to factor in—especially those who haven't read the series in a while, like myself—is the severe feeling of nostalgia in reading these pages. So severe, in fact, that there were points that my heart hurt so much I had to put the book down. As I'm reading the first moments that Percy and Annabeth meet, I'm flashing to vivid images I have when they have their other "first meeting" and also their last moments on the page in Rick's words, too. It's almost overwhelming, all the memories and nostalgia that can be tied up in these characters and in this story. I knew it would be impossible for me to do an objective review, having all these feelings, so instead I challenged myself to think about this review in the terms of this one question: what makes the first Percy Jackson and the Olympians book so great? My following paragraphs attempt to answer that question, and all my reviews in this series will evaluate along this same line of questioning, too.
The great thing about middle grade novels is that they're all about giving younger readers agency—and no one did that better than Rick Riordan did, especially since he was targeting a specific set of younger children who were and are so often looked down upon and seen as lesser because of who they are. Percy has ADHD and dyslexia, which has made his pursuit of education difficult, and are conditions that can severely impact one's self confidence and one's understanding of their self-worth. Yet, Percy is not hindered because of these conditions, but is in fact saved by them. In battles with eternal gods, his ADHD provides stellar battle reflexes that save his life. And while his dyslexia makes it difficult to read neon signs or forms, it doesn't stop him from understanding ancient Greek as if he'd been reading and writing and speaking it his whole life. Not only does Riordan provide agency to this specific set of younger children who went mostly unrepresented in children's literature until the publication of this series, but he provided agency for all of his young readers. If Percy as a 12 year old could go on a quest and have the power to change the course of the gods, of course younger kids across the globe all felt like they were powerful enough to do exactly the same.
Rick is in it for the long game with The Lightning Thief, in several ways. The first is with Luke's character. After a complete 180 (as far as Percy sees it), we recognize Luke as a friend who betrayed Percy, and is now an enemy. From the beginning—from the very first moment we meet Luke—we can sense Luke's dissatisfaction with the gods, his clear resentment for them, even though he has buried it deep. We know he's been mistreated, even if the details of why are still up for grabs until the last 10 pages. While Percy struggles to understand why Luke would do what he did, he can see why his deep seated feelings would have led him down this path. Yet, there's still so much we don't know about Luke, so much left to learn, so much for Percy to try to understand. The fight is getting bigger, and we know that Percy won't let the fight end with him on a sickbed. The second way in which Rick is playing the long game is with the friendship between Annabeth and Percy. It all starts in The Lightning Thief, a buildup from a sort of "enemies to friends" but not quite enemies enough to entirely warrant the trope title. I love rereading and watching how Annabeth wars with herself over what she thinks she should do because of who she is, versus what she actually wants to do. We get the foundational understanding of their dynamic—their teasing, their shyness, their jokes. There's a lot more to come as far as this, but it's clearer now to me than it was before that Rick was definitely building up to the famed Percabeth pairing.
The only thing I was shocked at was the lack of detail and lack of length regarding the famed Lotus Hotel and Casino scene. They were stuck in the hotel for five days, and it felt like hours to them, and yet I felt like I only spent mere seconds with the three protagonists in this strange landscape. It is probably the combination of the movie, and the stories of the fandom, that made this moment feel bigger, longer, and more detailed than it actually appears on the page. In a way, this actually is powerful, too, in leaving some elements up for interpretation. Now, with the new TV series adaptation coming soon to Disney+, Rick and the team of writers have the opportunity to fill in the holes of the questions surrounding the Lotus (who runs it? why does it exist? has no one ever looked for the missing people?). These are questions that could be answered later in the series, however, after watching every other monster they encounter get explained (Aunty Em's being Medusa, Crusty being Procrustes, etc.), it seems strange and empty that Percy and his team don't get an explanation on their way out of the hotel.
The story is just beginning—Percy's journey as the son of Poseidon continues in The Sea of Monsters. Stay tuned for my review!
*This review can also be found on my Goodreads page*
Comments
Post a Comment