Series in Review – Percy Jackson and the Olympians

In honor of the release of the new Heroes of Olympus book, The House of Hades, I decided to review the Percy Jackson books…

SYNOPSIS: Percy Jackson is about to be kicked out of boarding school… again. And that’s the least of his troubles. Lately, mythological monsters and the gods of Mount Olympus seem to be walking straight out of the pages of Percy’s Greek mythology textbook and into his life. And worse, he’s angered a few of them. Zeus’ master lightning bolt has been stolen, and Percy is the prime suspect.

Now Percy and his friends have just ten days to find and return Zeus’ stolen property and bring peace to a warring Mount Olympus. But to succeed on his quest, Percy will have to do more than catch the true thief: he must come to terms with the father who abandoned him; solve the riddle of the Oracle, which warns him of betrayal by a friend; and unravel a treachery more powerful than the gods themselves.

REVIEW: Percy Jackson and the Olympians is a series about all well, most of the adventures of an ADHD kid with dyslexia named Percy Jackson. Percy is a 12 year in the first book and gets a year older in every book. In the first book, he discovers Greek gods actually exist and that his father is one and there is a place for people just like him.

Characters: The characters in this series were easy to love and easy to hate, with a few exceptions. Percy was surprising easy to relate to and it was easy to understand how he was feeling in some situations and why. Although he has godly blood running through his veins, that doesn’t make him perfect, which is one thing I like so much about this series. You could say Percy has some serious issues. Percy isn’t the only main character in this series. You also have his friends some of which are willing to risk their lives to help Percy on his adventures. Talk about loyalty.

Storyline: After a while the books can seem a little repetitive. They usually start out with Percy getting in trouble and then going on some kind of quest. However each quest is different and occur in different situations so they are not the exact same. The books may appear to follow the same formula, but I can assure you each one has a different story filled with twists and turns you probably didn’t see coming.

Romance: I can’t really say anything without giving something away, but I will say there is some romance in the series, but it doesn’t really happen until the last two books.

Book by Book: Like many series, the first and last books are what I consider the best of the series. The ones in the best weren’t bad, they just weren’t as good. And I felt the ending provided the closure needed. It kind of tied up most of the loose ends and answered some unasked questions.

Mythology: I was kind of obsessed with Greek mythology before I got into the books so I feel I really need to talk about this. The books stay pretty true to the mythology. Not much is changed around, except some aspects are modernized, like where the Olympians make their home. The specialties of the gods are still relatively the same, but again, they are modernized a bit. That being said, the books do play around with some of the history of the gods, making it more interesting and once again modern. If you are a geek about Greek mythology, I don’t think you’ll be terribly upset by these books.

Conclusion: I would definitely recommend these books. They are pretty fast reads (they were written for middle school, plus I couldn’t stop turning the pages) and filled with humor, but still touch upon some serious topics. And the fact that my brother constantly reads and rereads this whole entire series repeatedly should testify to how good this series is (he hate rereading books). Books for both girls and boys, if you haven’t read Percy Jackson yet, you should really get started as soon as you can because you are really missing out!