Something clever I'll change later

I like fantasy. The end.
The Lightning Thief - Rick Riordan This review is also available on my blog, Stumptown Books.

In 2005 I was full flung into my love of the young adult genre. I've basically outgrown it now, which is pretty unfortunate really. There are a lot of good books in that genre, but I just can't get into them like I used to. That aside, for some reason this series completely passed me by. I saw the trailers for the movie and that still didn't convince me. So here we are, the books have been out for years, and I literally knew next to nothing about them besides the lady from Kill Bill had a teaser poster posing as Medusa.

I was pleasantly surprised at how quickly I was sucked into the story. I sat down and all of a sudden 50 pages had flown by. However, I feel that those first 50 pages were the strongest part of the novel, and about the time Percy Jackson arrived at Camp Half-Blood, my pace had slowed down quite a bit. The origin story is always my favorite! I start to get annoyed when 12-year-olds are sent on epic, death defying quests, and in this case all of the adults were like "Yup, you'll probably die. Sucks to be you." But that's just how the the Greek gods did things (i.e. were major dicks), so the age discrepancy didn't bug me all that much.

I don't know much about ancient Greece, and its mythology, and I learned quite a bit about it reading this book. For example, I had never heard of Procrustes, but quickly ran to Wikipedia to find out who he was when he was mentioned in the story. A few other reviewers have mentioned how annoyed they are when Medusa is portrayed as a monster, but hey you know, it's a mythological creature, I don't mind if we differ on opinions of what they "should" be. Like...oh I don't know, VAMPIRES. They sure have changed recently!

Honestly its obvious similarities to other recent powerhouses in the young adult genre did not bug me one bit. I found the idea to be in itself original and interesting enough that I probably let a few other things that usually bug me slide under the table. But hey, there's nothing wrong with just enjoying a book for the sake of it, not because I have to contrast and compare it to other books I've read.

All in all it was a rip-roaring read and I quite enjoyed it. I will definitely be picking up the sequels.

Currently reading

The Dog Stars
Peter Heller
Predator Cities #1: Mortal Engines
Philip Reeve