Percy Jackson & the Olympians Boxed Set (Percy Jackson and the Olympians, 1)

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Poseidon- I love the idea of him always wearing a Hawaiian shirt and Bermuda shorts and find it oddly amusing. also familiar sense in other way like I know places & cities (I mean in almost all high fantasy stories I'm just confused with the strange names & wondering where they were.) Seeing the ship again twisted my gut into knots. I'd almost died twice on the Princess Andromeda. Now it was heading straight for New York. Meat loaf sandwiches are good!" a second voice snarled. "But this is half-blood scent, I swear. They are on board!"

I also felt Riordan’s location-naming became increasingly obsessive, reaching a fever pitch of precision in the final volume The Last Olympian where the battle for Mt Olympus (a fantasy structure, I should note, hovering above the Empire State Building) is catalogued intersection by friggin' intersection! It's a stupid finishing school for society girls, all the way in New Hampshire. Can you see me in finishing school?" Of course, I can't help comparing to Harry Potter (though that's kind of silly, since kids-discovering-they're-really-some-kind-of-supernatural-being is a genre that existed long before). That's okay, PJ doesn't suffer by the comparison. Like Rowling, Riordan is excellent writing engaging adventures that are fast, enjoyable reads; and have plots that build consistently and elaborately to surprising reveals, within each book and across the series. A few contrasts that I really appreciate in PJ: I like the world continuity of using a single mythology (very well!), and the bringing of mythical Greek elements to present-day NYC are very clever, from cultural and humorous standpoints as well as educational. I also enjoy how the plot, without betraying any of the information that's established and developed through the book, usually ends up to be about something quite unexpected and different from the conclusions the characters and reader were drawing all along. Likewise, there's more room for characters to move outside expectations, sympathies, and archetypes, but never randomly or in betrayal of how they've been established.

did anyone notice that each book has a kind of reference retelling of a special Greek Hero? (I didn't either, I read somewhere & this just blown my mind! Riordan is a genius!) The Gods... haha, well... a love/hate relationship there. The banter between them was great but sometimes they reminded me of kids throwing a temper tantrum. Poseidon and Artemis were my top favorites (I probably would have joined the Hunters). Gods and mythical creatures are tossed around without a clear sense of coherence. Alliances are not built up, things keep popping up with the self-named 'heroes' running after them.

Chiron-Chiron was a great teacher for many great heroes and I am pretty sure that he became a father figure to many many heroes. reread "Sea of Monsters". Book wonderful, doesn't deserve it but review will be overshadowed by having just seen the movie. I never understand the Lynch-Dune Syndrome: omitting awesome, cinematic action sequences from the book to be replaced with lamer made-up action sequences in the movie. Doesn't make it more exciting or anything... just dumbed down. Rereading the book, among other things, was a sequence of: "Ohhhhh yeah, that's why that bit makes sense…" One of the odder (and to me, more angering) things the movie did was keeping Grover in the wedding dress to fool Polyphemus, but have P. think G. was a "housemaid" rather than prospective wife. Seriously? That's along the lines of "PATROCLUS WAS NOT ACHILLES'S COUSIN, 'TROY'!!" …Although I do appreciate that Annabeth took the Odysseus role, from the Sirens to the Nobody ploy. Very cool.This series is so fantastical and great, and Percy’s voice is such a fantastic one to experience. He grows so much over the course of the 5 books – he grows from an insecure 12 year old boy unsure of who he is and weary over this new world he’s entered to a confident young man capable of taking down a Titan. I was so proud of him by the end! Now, I know you're thinking, Wow, that was really irresponsible of him, blah, blah, blah, but Paul knows me pretty well. He's seen me slice up demons and leap out of exploding school buildings, so he probably figured taking a car a few hundred yards wasn't exactly the most dangerous thing I'd ever done.