Percy Jackson and the Olympians
So, while mandolinjen, Henry, and I drove to fromtheboonies's wedding and back, we listened to The Lightning Thief on the iPod. I was quite impressed, and I think Jen was as well.
At one point in the middle she described it as "American Gods meets Harry Potter", and that's a fair description. It's as if the author asked himself "How can I cash in on the Harry Potter craze?" and then came up with a brilliant idea: take the same rough setup, but map it to a modernized version of Greek mythology. Our twelve-year-old hero learns his long-missing dad was a Greek god, and now he must live up to that heritage.
The book avoids a lot of the cruftier bits of Rowling's early books. Where the first two HP books are set almost exclusively at school, and putter along without a plot for most of their length, The Lightning Thief introduces mystery and action pretty quickly, then once the setting is fully introduced, embarks on a quest that takes young Percy all the way across the US, down into Hades, and up to Olympus. There is quite a lot more action, and the stakes are much higher. The take on the mythology felt right to me, with lots of nice appearances by classical characters.
All in all, I'd say it was very noticeably better than the first couple Harry Potter books. While not as good as the best of that series, this book is only the warmup. If the author can match Rowling's feat of making each book bigger and more interesting than the previous, this could be a great series. I'm definitely looking forward to reading (or more likely, hearing) the next one.
At one point in the middle she described it as "American Gods meets Harry Potter", and that's a fair description. It's as if the author asked himself "How can I cash in on the Harry Potter craze?" and then came up with a brilliant idea: take the same rough setup, but map it to a modernized version of Greek mythology. Our twelve-year-old hero learns his long-missing dad was a Greek god, and now he must live up to that heritage.
The book avoids a lot of the cruftier bits of Rowling's early books. Where the first two HP books are set almost exclusively at school, and putter along without a plot for most of their length, The Lightning Thief introduces mystery and action pretty quickly, then once the setting is fully introduced, embarks on a quest that takes young Percy all the way across the US, down into Hades, and up to Olympus. There is quite a lot more action, and the stakes are much higher. The take on the mythology felt right to me, with lots of nice appearances by classical characters.
All in all, I'd say it was very noticeably better than the first couple Harry Potter books. While not as good as the best of that series, this book is only the warmup. If the author can match Rowling's feat of making each book bigger and more interesting than the previous, this could be a great series. I'm definitely looking forward to reading (or more likely, hearing) the next one.