By Mark Rodriguez
If you've been keeping track of my blog posts, you've noticed I'm not one for reading actual books. Paige is more of the reader, and she has mentioned a few books here and there, and of course her love for the Pretty Little Liars book series, not just the TV series. I tried to find a good book to actually sit down and read and let my imagination soar, like when I was kid, but nothing really interested me. But then I saw Mark of Athena in the local Wal-Mart and read some of the back. It mentioned people facing creatures of Greek myths but in modern day, and that piqued my curiosity. But then I read the intro saying 'it continues the adventures of...' and I was like 'naw, I gotta read this from the beginning. Going to an actual book store this nice girl told me it was actually a sequel or spin-off of sorts of the Percy Jackson stories, a 5-book tale that I should really read first so that all the references to it would make sense. And so, I started off with the first book.... The Lightning Thief! Written by Rick Riordian.
The Story-
This story follows the life of Percy Jackson, a kid with dyslexia and having a knack for always getting into trouble and being shipped from school to school. On a school field trip to the museum he gets attacked by one of his teachers that was a demon in disguise! Another teacher tosses him a pen, that when the cap is removed, turns into a sword! Percy kills the fiend, and despite the commotion that would have caused, everyone outside acts like nothing happened, and act like that evil teacher never existed!! Shortly after this, Percy was booted out of this school too.
Our 12 year old hero soon returns to his home town in New York and sees his mother again. They decide to head for a trip to their favorite beach. But then in a dangerous rainstorm they are being chased by the Minotaur, from ancient myth!! The mighty beast kills Percy's mom, and the young boy somehow manages to avoid the beast and kill it with its own horn. To make things weirder, his old friend from school, Grover, turns out to be a Satyr, a human with the lower half of a goat!
More is explained as Percy and Grover make it to Half-Blood Hill where it is revealed that he is actually a demi-god, the son of a human and a god. It gets more complicated when it's discovered that he is the son of Poseidon, one of the three main gods that was forbidden from having any more human children! His teacher also turns out to be a centaur named Chiron, and he eventually explains the main quest that sets the story off.
Currently the gods are at the brink of war. It seems Zeus is missing his bolt of lightning, a weapon of incredible destructive power, and he thinks Poseidon is responsible! Worse yet, even though Percy had just recently found out about being a Half-Blood, Zeus thinks Poseidon put him up to stealing it!!! Suspicion also falls on Hades, the god banished to the underworld, that would benefit greatly from a war between Zeus and Poseidon. And there lies the mission. By the summer solstice, Percy, Grover and Annabeth must set forth on their quest to confront Hades and retrieve the bolt of lightning before all hell literally breaks loose.
Annabeth is the daughter of Athena, and due to her mother's rivalry with Poseidon, doesn't get along too well with Percy at first. She trains hard and has lived in Half-Blood Camp most of her life and anxious to prove her skills in the real world. Grover strives for what all satyrs strive for, the chance to search and find the god Pan. To do so he must prove himself worthy by helping Percy on his mission and bringing him back alive. As for Percy, he thinks that maybe his mother is still alive and being held captive by Hades in the underworld. Will his desire to rescue his mother outweigh the importance of him saving the world?
As the heroes have 10 days remaining on their perilous quest, they face monsters, gods and other challenges. Things become more complicated when events cause Percy to believe that maybe Hades wasn't the Lighting Thief....
My Opinions
Wow!!!! Just wow!! This book is super amazing and literally kept my interest from cover to cover. It's always entertaining and the narrator, which is Percy, describes things with his own sense of humor that keeps it interesting. Even the titles on the table of contents are bizzare, funny and interesting that makes you wonder what's it going to be about. Right off the bat the first chapter is called 'I vaporized my teacher'. It already makes you think 'wtf???' and gets you into reading it.
While it takes almost half the book to get to the Lightning Thief part, the book takes its time in developing Percy and his friends, and slowly opening this whole new world he's suddenly entered into. He's a typical New York kid very much from 'our real world' and he's suddenly thrust into the fact that gods of myth do exist and have existed for all these years. We get to see him adapt at Half-Blood Camp, get better along with Annabeth, defeat his new rival Clarrisse and train with Luke. I do like the fact that the main reason there are so many demi-gods running around in modern day was because the gods were known for messing around with humans in tales of myth. They just never stuck around to raise them. LOL
Parts of his past come back to him to explain things he never understood. We find out things like how Percy and Annabeth aren't really dyslexic, they were born with the natural ability to read Greek, and have trouble reading English. Percy's mom never let him fly on a plane since it would involve taking to the skies, where an angry Zeus would strike the plane down. Little hints and clues keep coming back to Percy's mind as he pieces together his new reality.
Despite being a good old fashioned book, not a comic with pictures, this book does an amazing job describing everything. The gods nectar that tastes like whatever your favorite food is, the strange sense of hatred you get whenever you're near Ares, and the excitement of the fights. It's all so crystal clear in my mind, you can easily imagine everything that's going on. The action is pretty intense, especially later on when Percy gets better at using his water powers and his sword Riptide. I especially like the fight between Percy and Ares, and the fact that despite them fighting it out with classic mythical swords, the rest of us regular people saw them as two normal people fighting with shotguns.
And yes, I have to bring up the fact that for a while they were in Las Vegas. I like how they described the hotels without actually naming them... but yeah... I knew what they were. And that casino where kids can play forever, but lose the notion of time and could literally be there for years without knowing.... I think it's based on some trap in a myth story, but it's also a clever knock at how real casinos have no windows and no clocks so you can easily lose track of time and gamble the night away. And when our intrepid trio finally pulled themselves out of there, they realized what seemed like a few hours was actually 5 hours in real time, and they only had one day left to fulfill their quest!!!! When I read that part I was like 'holy crap, they really screwed themselves over!!!! Now what??!!'
I could go on and on, but the main deal is, I just love this book. I heard there are movies based on the first two books. I plan to rent the Lightning Thief and make an Out on DVD episode about it with my thoughts comparing it to the book. I am very happy with this book and I'm glad Percy and his gang has gotten me back into reading. And yes... I already bought Sea of Monsters. I'm gonna start reading it after seeing the first movie.
