Check out the previous post. It’s really nice yarn.
Anyway. I missed the start of this book-relate bandwagon, but there’s this series called Percy Jackson and the Olympians. The most recent one is apparently selling quite well, and it’s the fourth book in a series which I hear is improving with each book. The people who told me this are professional book-hawkers with good taste, so I picked up a copy of The Lightning Thief, which is the first one. (Man, I’ve changed – I read books in order and stuff. Never used to do that.) They were right. It was exactly right. Percy is twelve, about to get kicked out of yet another fancy boarding school, and has major problems. Aside from the fact that he’s dyslexic and ADHD, certain teachers are seriously out to get him. The first chapter’s title – “I accidentally vaporize my pre-algebra teacher” – says everything, I think. Percy is a half-blood, son of a greek god, and his pre-algebra teacher is one of the Kindly Ones. This isn’t even the good part – that starts when he gets to Camp Half-Blood, meets the children of Ares and Hermes and the others, finds out that his best friend is a satyr and gets sent on a quest with one of the daughters of Athena. It’s a fun read, with excellent mythological details, fantastic fights, and a smart-ass hero who has a whole lot of potential. I’m going to get the next one, soon. After I finish reading some more of my book backlog.
