Rick Riordan Archive

The Titan’s Curse by Rick Riordan

Posted March 1, 2013 By dorolerium

Title: The Titan’s Curse
Author: Rick Riordan
Publisher: Puffin Books
Genre: YA Fantasy
Pages: 304
How I Read It: Kindle edition from the library.

Synopsis: When the goddess Artemis goes missing, she is believed to have been kidnapped. And now it’s up to Percy and his friends to find out what happened.

Who is powerful enough to kidnap a goddess? They must find Artemis before the winter solstice, when her influence on the Olympian Council could swing an important vote on the war with the titans.

Not only that, but first Percy will have to solve the mystery of a rare monster that Artemis was hunting when she disappeared—a monster rumored to be so powerful it could destroy Olympus forever.

* Synopsis taken from Goodreads.

My Review: The Percy Jackson books always delight me, in a similar way to how the Harry Potter series did.  We’ve got a cast of characters, set out on a quest to save the world in some way, and wacky hijinks ensue in the meantime.  I always find these stories to be engaging and this one had me on the edge of my seat.

One of my favorite things about this series is that each book has its own story, but the overall arch is building towards something, as Percy is meeting more people who become a part of the larger story as well.  My only complaint?  The books are always too short!  I want mooooooooore!!!

This go around, Percy is told to stay put at Camp Half-Blood, and for reasons of his own, he sets out on a journey that runs parallel to the quest to find Artemis.  We soon learn that the whole thing is another step in the overall plan of Kronos, which should come as no surprise to anyone who is a fan of this series.  The real question, however, is how?  What does Kronos want with Percy this time?

The monsters in this one were more ominous to me as well, based on their sheer destructive talent.  I won’t spoil it for you, but let’s just say that one set of monsters are absolutely something I had nightmares about as a kid.  So I’m actually really glad this series wasn’t around when I was younger, cuz I’m positive I would have read it and then thought, “OMG, Rick Riordan, are you READING MY MIND?!?”

Character wise, I was particularly intrigued by the way Percy is evolving, the way he comes to realize the new feelings he’s experiencing, and how he tries to deal with people he doesn’t always get along with.  He really is such a well-rounded character, and seems to represent a 14 year old so well, that I completely believed the way he behaved and thought just how in touch Riordan is with the age group he’s writing.  I’ve heard before that he consults his own children when writing his young adult books, which is a fantastic idea, and it really shows through in the writing.

I have two books left in the series, and I’m already feeling sad that I’m going to have to say a temporary goodbye to my favorite characters.  I say temporary because I know there’s another series featuring some of these people, so I’ll be able to see them a bit more after I finish.

The other huge plus is that the first book is already a movie, which I enjoyed, and the second movie is coming out later this year.  I’m also thrilled that the next movie is going to star my future husband Nathan Fillion, as well as another favorite Whedon alumnist, Anthony Stewart Head.  I’m hoping this third book gets optioned as well, so we could see more of the two of them.

This was a great continuation of the series, and I think most fans will enjoy it.  If you haven’t read this one yet, get out there and get a copy because it’s great fun!

Read this book if: If you’re a fan of the series, absolutely continue it!

My Rating: 4/5 – Borderline amazing!

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The Sea of Monsters by Rick Riordan

Posted December 29, 2012 By dorolerium

Title: Percy Jackson & the Sea of Monsters
Author: Rick Riordan
Publisher: Disney Hyperion Books
Genre: YA Fantasy
Pages: 279
How I Read It: Hard cover from the library.

Synopsis: The way he said my name sent a chill down my back.  Nobody called me “Perseus” except those who knew my true identity.  Friends…and enemies.

Percy Jackson’s seventh grade year has been surprisingly quiet.  Not a single monster has set foot on his New York prep-school campus.  But when an innocent game of dodgeball among Percy and his classmates turns into a death match against an ugly gang of cannibal giants, things get…well, ugly.

And the unexpected arrival of Percy’s friend Annabeth brings more bad news: the magical borders that protect Camp Half-Blood have been poisoned by a mysterious enemy, and unless a cure is found, the only safe haven for demigods will be destroyed.

In this fresh, funny, and hugely anticipated follow-up to The Lightning Thief, Percy and his friends must journey into the Sea of Monsters to save their beloved camp.  But first, Percy will discover a stunning new secret about his family – one that makes him wonder if being claimed as Poseidon’s son is an honor, or simply a cruel joke.

* Synopsis taken from the book jacket.

My Review: Since the moment I finished the first Percy Jackson book, I wanted to make time to read the follow up.  I adore Percy as a character and wanted to see what other kinds of adventures he was going to get into.  What makes it all the more amusing to me is that he doesn’t even want this stuff!  It just finds him by default because of who he is.

We start this book about a year after the beginning of the previous one, as far as I can tell anyway.  It’s almost summer again, and unfortunately for Percy, it’s been requested that he not come back to camp this year, with no real explanation as to why.  However, Percy soon finds himself in an all new adventure to not only save his friends, but the camp he’s come to love.

One of my favorite things about reading Riordan is that he really just gets teens, or at least he presents them exactly the same as my impression of them.  His characters aren’t overly angsty, full of themselves, or difficult to like.  They’re just regular kids who find out along the way that they’re demigods, and that doesn’t seem to change them in a way you would expect.  Percy in particular is a rather reluctant hero who fights monsters because his friends need him, but he doesn’t wander around school treating other kids poorly as a result.  Truly one of my all-time favorite teen characters.

I do wish this book had been a bit longer than it was.  We spent about half the book learning about the problem our characters were facing, so I wanted more action and evil goodness from the monsters.  I guess that’s one good thing about reading this series: it leaves you wanting more, which is good motivation to pick the next book up.  I also wanted more Grover – I adore that guy and he was just not around enough this time.  Hopefully the next book will have more of him!

A couple of pretty big things happen towards the end of this book, which make me really eager to pick up book three right away.  I’m going to force myself to wait a little, mostly to savor it, but I’m absolutely excited to read more of this series.

Read this book if: I really enjoyed this follow up to the previous book.  If you read the first one, pick this up.  This is also a pretty great middle grade/YA series, so encourage your kids to get it too!

My Rating: 3.5/5 – Two thumbs up, fine holiday fun!

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The Red Pyramid by Rick Riordan

Posted July 20, 2012 By dorolerium

Title: The Red Pyramid
Author: Rick Riordan
Publisher: Hyperion
Genre: YA Fantasy
Pages: 516
How I Read It: Hard copy from the library

Synopsis: Since their mother’s death, Carter and Sadie have become near strangers. While Sadie has lived with her grandparents in London, her brother has traveled the world with their father, the brilliant Egyptologist, Dr. Julius Kane.

One night, Dr. Kane brings the siblings together for a “research experiment” at the British Museum, where he hopes to set things right for his family. Instead, he unleashes the Egyptian god Set, who banishes him to oblivion and forces the children to flee for their lives.

Soon, Sadie and Carter discover that the gods of Egypt are waking, and the worst of them —Set— has his sights on the Kanes. To stop him, the siblings embark on a dangerous journey across the globe – a quest that brings them ever closer to the truth about their family and their links to a secret order that has existed since the time of the pharaohs.

* Synopsis taken from Goodreads

My Review: I was poking around the library recently and ran across this book, which I was drawn to due to my love of the first Percy Jackson novel, and I wanted to see what else Riordan had to offer.  While I can’t say I enjoyed this as much as The Lightning Thief, it was still an entertaining book and I’m glad that I read it.

It took me awhile to get adjusted to the format this book was written in, which was essentially the story of what Carter and Sadie went through, transcribed from a tape they recorded for someone else to find.  It’s a clever concept, but I think I’d like it better in actual audio format as opposed to reading it.  Some of the chapters are told by Sadie, others by Carter, and it was mildly difficult at times to keep track of which one of them is telling the story at which point.  At times, that didn’t really matter depending on what was going on, but at other points it was a little more important because of the different skills they each possess.

However, I definitely found myself with a bit of irritation while reading this book, and I think it was really with the way the Egyptian gods were handled throughout the story.  A lot of detail concerning ancient Egypt and the entire culture of that civilization was included, but instead of the gods being living beings, they were more spirits that existed in different ways.  I don’t want to spoil anything for anyone who intends to read this book, but I’ll just leave it by saying I would have preferred them to be more real entities instead of how they were presented.

That being said, I am not the target audience for this series and I think I’m bound to have different complaints than the ideal reader.  If I were a pre-teen, I think I would have enjoyed this a lot more than I did as an adult.  It was actually pretty informative, and I learned quite a bit about Egyptian mythology through reading it.  The situations the kids find themselves in are rather harrowing considering their ages and what they are expected to go through in order to preserve the world as they know it.

My criticisms aside, I liked the book and I would be curious to read further into the series.  It looks like Riordan has just three books planned for this one, and all are out now.  I only wish the series was intended to go longer, since it would be great to see what Carter and Sadie have in store for them as they transition from being teens to adults.

Read this book if: YA readers who enjoy the Percy Jackson series will likely enjoy this one.

My Rating: 3/5 – Two thumbs up, fine holiday fun!

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Percy Jackson & the Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan

Posted May 11, 2012 By dorolerium

Title: Percy Jackson & the Lightning Thief
Author: Rick Riordan
Publisher: Disney Hyperion Books
Genre: YA Fantasy
Pages: 377
How I Read It: Hard copy from the library.

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’s 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’s 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.

My Review: My introduction to the Percy Jackson series was through watching the movie for this book, which piqued my interest enough to get me to read it.  Good job movie!!!

The first thing that struck me not too far into the book was how much the movie varied from the original work.  After reading the whole thing, this disappointed me quite a bit, because there were a lot of pretty cool scenes in the book that I would have loved to see on screen.  I assume that was done to fit the movie into standards that work for the target audience, but it would have been so awesome to see some of these explosions and fights!

This book does a lot to set up potential future conflicts, feeding into the continuation of the series, but in a subtle way that makes you enjoy it more than if it were blatantly obvious that a series was the goal.  Percy is a character that you want to see succeed, he’s a great, yet misunderstood, kid and it’s obvious that he’s going to mature into an interesting teenager.  His character alone makes me want to continue reading the series!

I also loved that this combined something we know a bit about, Greek mythology, with the modern world we’re familiar with.  To a large extent, the magic I felt while reading this book rivaled how I felt for Harry Potter when I first started reading that – with the notable exception that I found Harry to be somewhat annoying in his younger years and I didn’t get that with Percy.

One thing that did confuse me was why the Gods thought Percy had stolen the lightning bolt…sure, they could claim motivations from his father, but don’t they have better logs of who has visited them?  Couldn’t they have just looked at the visitors from the day the bolt went missing and figure out from there?

I really liked the fact that Percy had to visit the Oracle pretty early on, and learn what the prophecy meant from there.  Although I’ve seen the movie, there were some surprises due to the deviation from the book (the Oracle itself), so there were a few things I was totally not expecting!  I liked this more realistic approach to how this world might go – there are going to be all kinds of people/monsters/whatever interfering in Percy’s life, larger scale things that no one knows about or can predict.  I’m not going to spoil things for anyone, but I can definitely say that I liked the more intricate workings of the villains in this book, and the larger story line they are building up to.

This is a series I am eager to continue reading, and I plan to pick up the next book as soon as it fits into my schedule!

Read this book if: I think this is a fun fantasy series that will likely appeal to fans of Harry Potter.  It’s not quite the same kind of magic, but since we’ve got no more Harry, this is a nice substitution.

My Rating: 4.5/5 – Borderline amazing!

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