This review was first written and posted in March of 2013.

Percy Jackson opens in much the same way that Animorphs did: with the main character talking to the reader, pretending like real life snuck into the fiction section.  All well and good, but I have the same issue here that I did there.  Is he keeping a diary as all this goes on?  Why did he publish it?  It’s not like the shaky excuse we get in Animorphs, where they “want to share the truth” because, ya know, aliens invading and all that.  I guess Percy just got really bored one day and/or wanted to make some money off his adventures?  (To be fair, I get the impression that saving the world in secret doesn’t really pay well…)

He also cautions us that being a half-blood isn’t a lot of fun, and if we suspect we are one we should just stop reading and pretend to be normal instead.  That seems a bit counter-intuitive.  “Hey, are you interested in reading this awesome book about adventure and awesomeness?  WELL IT ACTUALLY SUCKS AND YOU SHOULDN’T WANT IT.  But we’ll still accept your money.”  I get where this is all coming from, but I don’t recall Percy Jackson as being the right set of books for that message.  They’re too fanciful and don’t have a high enough body count.  (And now I’m thinking of Animorphs again…)

I will say this, though.  In less than two pages of reading this, I can hear Percy’s voice.  So many books these days are written in first person, but there’s flavor to the writing, no sense of a person telling the story.  It’s just third-person with ‘I’s instead of ‘she’s.  This book understands the point of a first person POV.

heading to the Metropolitan Museum of Art to look at ancient Greek and Roman stuff.

 I know—it sounds like torture. Most Yancy field trips were.

…I picked up this book to read about ancient Greek mythology come to life, but that’s torture?  Am I hopeless fuddy nerd, and being called a hopeless fuddy nerd by the very book that is asking me to spend money on it?

Yeesh, at least hide that a few chapters back, after I’ve already bought the book and taken it home. We’re still in the first few pages, aka the part that I read while still in the store.

He also had this awesome collection of Roman armor and weapons, so he was the only teacher whose class didn’t put me to sleep.

But, but, but you said that going to the museum to look at awesome collections of Roman armor and weapons is tantamount to torture! 

Well, I have to give the book credit for one thing.  This is starting to sound a lot like every conversation I’ve ever had with a 12 year-old.

So Percy and his class are at the museum, and Percy explains to us that he has bad luck on field trips and causes a lot of accidents.

Like at my fifth-grade school, when we went to the Saratoga battlefield, I had this accident with a Revolutionary War cannon. I wasn’t aiming for the school bus, but of course I got expelled anyway. And before that, at my fourth-grade school, when we took a behind-the-scenes tour of the Marine World shark pool, I sort of hit the wrong lever on the catwalk and our class took an unplanned swim. And the time before that … Well, you get the idea.

WHAT KIND OF FIELD TRIP DESITNATION FOR SCHOOL CHILDREN HAS WORKING CANONS FULL OF GUN POWDER AND CATWALKS OVER SHARK TANKS?!?!?!

DO LAWSUITS NOT EXIST IN THIS WORLD?

Percy shouldn’t be expelled from various schools; he should be living the high life off all his winnings after his mom sued the pants off whoever runs these places.

This opening is all over the place.  First we’re at the museum, then we flashback on Percy’s other field trips, then we flash forward-but-not-all-the-way forward to the bus trip to the museum?  Also, most of the time here is taken up with paragraph long descriptions of what each new character looks like, but I’m inclined to allow it.  For books aimed at this age group, that’s appropriate.

Back to the story.  They’re at the museum, looking at ancient stuff, and the teacher calls on Percy to have him answer a bunch of questions about what they’re viewing.  Through this conversation, we get the story of Kronos eating the rest of the gods.  Then their Latin teacher, Mr. Brunner, holds Percy behind and tries to impress on him how important it is for Percy to learn all these myths and legends, because they will be vitally important to his real life.

I get why it’s important for Percy to learn it.  But there’s 27 other kids in this class.  (26, minus Grover.)  Why are they here?  Why is it important to them?  Does he even make up an answer for them, or are they fucked over for the sake of Percy’s education?  I know why people study this in high school/college/beyond, but these kids are 12.  Why should they care?

After hammering in the fact that mythology is going to be important to Percy, he goes outside to join the rest of the class for lunch and also mention that the weather is wonky around there.

“Oops.” She grinned at me with her crooked teeth. Her freckles were orange, as if somebody had spray-painted her face with liquid Cheetos.

Percy is defined by his actions.  Mr. Brunner is defined by his teaching style.  Nancy here is the next-most-often-mentioned character, and most of the focus is given to her looks. 

Got to catch those kids early and hammer in the gender norms, I guess.

Percy loses his temper and pushes her (or…sorta pushes her, he has a mini-blackout, I guess?) with the water from the fountains.  Mrs. Dodds comes by to get on his case and takes him back into the museum.  Grover looks pretty terrified at the prospect of leaving Percy and Mrs. Dodds alone.  Grover keeps looking over to Mr. Brunner, like he’s trying to get the guy to notice, but for some reason doesn’t go over there and get the guy to notice.  So Percy ends up alone in the museum while Mrs. Dodds spouts off some really confusing stuff about having ‘found’ him and getting him to confess.

Then she turns into a monster.

Awesome!

Mr. Brunner finally arrives and tosses a pen at Percy, which turns into a sword just in time for Percy to do monster battle.

It was a sword—Mr. Brunner’s bronze sword, which he always used on tournament day.

Wait, wasn’t Riptide supposed to be this big, important thing full of power or whatnot?  Why was Mr. Brunner using it like a toy in class?

Percy beats the monster very easily and the body disintegrates, because messes and problems and obstacles are for other books.  He goes back outside, where no one seems to know what’s happened, and the second teacher playing chaperone is now called Mrs. Kerr.  No one has heard of Mrs. Dodds.

So, obviously the monster took the place of the teacher.  But why the name change?  Why didn’t the monster just impersonate Mrs. Kerr?  Why create a whole new person/identity?  Just to make it easier to tell that we’ve run across something freaky?  I think the vaporized monster does that pretty well.

This book, I can already tell, is going to be a little hard for me.  I’m not used to reading middle-grade books, and since they are directed at a younger audience, there’s going to be a different style to things.  The way characters are written, the worldbuilding, even just the writing style, it’s all a lot more direct and blunt than I’m used to.  In an older book, this would annoy the ever-livin snot out of me, but kids that age still need things to be…if not black and white then at least painted in primary colors.  Which is not to say that they’re stupid; they’re not.  But they’re just starting to get into complex concepts, so throwing in too many details at once doesn’t fly. 

But I’m an adult reading these, and try as I might to get in the correct frame of mind, I’m going to end up complaining about stuff that wouldn’t bother (or even be bad for) a reader of the target audience.  So, I guess, we should just all understand that from the get-go.  Consider this less a critique of the book’s appropriateness or quality, and more just a read-through by an adult/from an adult perspective.