Percy Jackson: A Great Idea, but Slightly Disapointing

 

The Percy Jackson series was my favorite book series when I was in primary school. To be fair it was the one of only book series that I knew of, the other one being Trompie (an Afrikaans book series about a naughty schoolboy). Looking back the Percy Jackson series is not as good as I remembered it. 

The series is about the adventures of the titular hero Percy Jackson in a world filled with Greek gods and monsters. What makes the series unique is that it is set in modern times but with the existence of gods and monsters being kept secret from the general public.

I first tried Percy Jackson because I am a lover of Greek mythology (one of my many obsessions). I watched the Percy Jackson film in the theater and loved it (even though I now recognize that the film was utterly atrocious). When I heard that there was a book series that the film was based on I decided that I simply had to try it.

Although the series has an interesting premise Rick Riordan's storytelling and writing leave much to be desired. The storyline of most of the Percy Jackson books follows the same basic formula. Percy and his friends usually have to retrieve an object central to the plot within a certain amount of time and then have to face a few monsters on the way to find that object (echoing the stories of ancient Greek heroes like Odysseus and Jason). This formula can become quite tiresome after a few books.

That being said that series can be very fun if you are only interested in a simple adventure story, but you will be disappointed if you want something with a bit more depth. The series is definitely better suited for children than it is for adults. It definitely does not compare to a children's book like The Hobbit which could be children and adults alike. That being said the series is not terrible. I would still recommend it to anyone whose children like adventure stories.

I would however discourage anyone from reading Rick Riordan's other books. I have read all of the books in his Legacy of Kain series (the series is like Percy Jackson but with Egyptian mythology instead of Greek mythology). They were almost readable, but the two books I read from the Heroes of Olympus series were utterly atrocious. The series is set in the same world as the Percy Jackson series, but with a new set of characters. We sometimes see the writing switch between the third and first-person between different sentences at times. There are books that switch between third and first-person. We can for instance see this in the Odyssey when where the narrative switches from third to first-person for a few chapters and the back to third person. In the case of the Odyssey, the switch takes place over multiple chapters and there are clear narrative reasons for it. In Rick Riordan's case, it just looks sloppy and lazy. Rick Riordan also wrote a Norse mythology series, but I can't attest to its quality as I did not read it. 

Rick Riordan clearly was successful with the Percy Jackson series and wanted to milk the idea as much as possible. As far as I am concerned he should have ended with the Percy Jackson series and tried something new.

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