Review: Percy Jackson and the Olympians was the Start of an Era. (Spoilers)

From the ages of 12-14, this series was basically my entire world. All I would ever talk about was “Percy Jackson this” and “Percy Jackson that”. I would not shut up about the Greek gods and their stories. However, now that I’m older and have seen how chaotic the Percy Jackson fandom is, I have left it entirely, watching disappointedly from the sidelines as they quickly implode. With that said, this is the start of the series where I will be discussing and reviewing the Riordanverse and will be concluding with a blog on why I left.

#1: The Lightning Thief

This was the start of an era for me and I will admit that this book was the thing that would inspire me to start writing my own stories based on world mythology a year after reading it. While I had already enjoyed the stories of the Greek gods, this rekindled that interest and turned it into an obsession. Rick Riordan had managed to bring Greek mythology to life in the form of a sarcastic teenager and his friends at an amazing summer camp. The world he had created was easy to put yourself into and I loved it. On top of that , there were 4 more books in the series! After completely devouring Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief, I quickly moved onto Book 2….

#2: The Sea of Monsters

The Percabeth ship is in full swing in this book and I was there for every second of it. The awkward tension of young love trying to figure itself out was adorable, especially since Annabeth’s former crush, Luke Castellan, is still in the picture. Throughout the book, she’s trying to figure out her feelings for her crush-turned-traitor and her feelings for the ever loyal and endearingly sarcastic Percy Jackson.

Meanwhile, Percy is going through his own problems as he has to come to terms with his brother, Tyson, being a Cyclops. He tries to stand up for him, but still has some moments where he almost hates him because he doesn’t want to deal with him and he seems to be pushing him apart from Annabeth. However, he still stays by Tyson’s side and Annabeth learns to accept Tyson for who he is, despite the fact that it was a cyclops that killed her friend, Thalia.

Speaking of Thalia, she comes back to life at the end of the story and becomes a huge character in Book Three.

#3: The Titan’s Curse

The Titan’s Curse was the book that kinda started my emo/punk/goth/I-dunno-what-I-was-going-for phase. Why? One name: Nico di Angelo.

I loved this character and he quickly became my favorite person in the entire series. He started off as a happy, peppy kid with a dark backstory full of tradgedy that leads him to become super angsty and head off on his own journey. And would you believe he’s the son of Hades, my favorite Greek god? Time to break out the eyeliner because being depressed is cool!

Looking back on that phase of life makes me cringe.

Nico’s existence also adds to the bigger picture of what’s going on. While this book mainly focuses on saving Artemis and Annabeth from the hands of the Titan Atlas, one of the sub-plots which pushes it foward is the prophecy that one of the Big Three’s children will be the person to either destory or save Olympus by either helping raise Kronos from the dead or by fighting against him. Originally, Percy (since he’s the son of Poseidon) was supposed to be the one to do this, but Thalia and Nico have now entered the chat, which increases the chances of Kronos’s possible takeover since Thalia is the daughter of Zeus and Nico is the son of Hades. However, at the end of the book Thalia chososes to join the Hunters of Artemis so that she’ll stay 15 forever and never have to face that decision again, leaving Percy and Nico to figure out what they’re going to do.

#4: The Battle of the Labyrinth

The Battle of the Labyrinth was my favorite book in the series. Not only was do we get Percabeth angst (since Rachel Dare – a girl we met in the last book – likes Percy) but Nico has fully accepted his gothy self in this book. The prohpecy is in full swing now, Nico has decided to side with Percy, and Kronos is now back in the body of Luke Castellan. Annabeth is not only jealous of Rachel at this point, but is also struggling to get over her crush on Luke, seeing as he now has turned evil.

However, while this doesn’t really affect the plot at large, I would like to point something out that I discovered in re-reads of this book that severely affects the later books concerning Nico’s character arc. In Chapter 18, “Grover Causes a Stampede”, we get this interaction between Nico, Percy and Annabeth that I find quite interesting. It says, quote:

When I got back to the horses, Nico was having trouble. His pegasus kept shying away from him, reluctant to let him mount.

He smells like dead people! the pegasus complained.

Hey now, Blackjack said. Come on, Porkpie. Lotsa demigods smell weird. It ain’t their faut. Oh – uh, I didn’t mean you, boss.

“Go without me!” Nico said. “I don’t want to go back to that camp anyway.”

“Nico,” I said, “we need your help.”

He folded his arms and scowled. Then Annabeth put her hand on his shoulder.

“Nico,” she said. “Please.”

Slowly, his expression softened. “All right,” he said reluctantly. “For you. But I’m not staying.”

I raised an eyebrow at Annabeth, like, How come all of a sudden Nico listens to you? She stuck her tongue out at me.

It’s strange that Rick Riordan wrote this scene so that it seems like Nico has a crush on Annabeth. You might think this is a far stretch but is it, really? Guys will often do things to impress the girl they like. It’s possible to assume that Nico bending to Annabeth to go to Camp Half-Blood was possibly him trying to impress her. Another bit of evidence I have for this is that Rick Riordan definitely wouldn’t have thought to make Nico gay in The Battle of the Labyrinth because the whole inclusion and diversity thing wasn’t a huge issue in 2008. We were still sane back then and didn’t want to sexualize the kids into oblivion. I’ll touch more on this in my next review, but I think it’s a good thing to keep in mind.

#5: The Last Olympian

This is the final climax of the series where we finally get the epic smackdown between Percy and Kronos that we’ve been waiting for for the entire series. This was one of the best written fights in the book and really highlights Percy’s compassion for the other demigods when he demands that the gods pardon them at the end. Percabeth becomes official and we get more sequel bait for Heroes of Olympus, a series I’ll talk about tomorrow.

Unntil next time,

M.J.