Percy wakes up sitting on a porch at Camp Half-Blood.  Grover is there, and he gives Percy the minotaur’s horn.  Percy realizes that everything really did happen, then spends some time in a funk because he believes his mom is dead.  And by ‘some time,’ I mean a few seconds.  Then he drinks the magic drink that tastes like cookies, feels better, and it’s time to focus on more adventuring.

I don’t really mind the desire to focus on adventuring over Sally.  This wouldn’t be a fun book if he didn’t do anything except mope.  But in that case, why make him believe that Sally’s dead?  It’s not like there was a body; he could just as easily be convinced that she’s fine and just teleported somewhere.

Between here and there, I simply couldn’t process everything I was seeing. The landscape was dotted with buildings that looked like ancient Greek architecture—an open-air pavilion, an amphitheater, a circular arena—except that they all looked brand new, their white marble columns sparkling in the sun. In a nearby sandpit, a dozen high school–age kids and satyrs played volleyball. Canoes glided across a small lake. Kids in bright orange T-shirts like Grover’s were chasing each other around a cluster of cabins nestled in the woods. Some shot targets at an archery range. Others rode horses down a wooded trail, and, unless I was hallucinating, some of their horses had wings.

So…does Percy not understand the concept of building new buildings in an old style, or is he flummoxed by what sounds like a very average summer camp?  The satyrs and winged horses, I’ll give him that, but those two things aren’t mentioned until way down the list of ‘everything.’

He meets up with Annabeth, Chiron (Mr. Brunner) and Dionysus (Mr. D).  I love the way this book describes Dionysus.  The image of that guy in a Hawaiian shirt never fails to make me giggle.

“Oh, I suppose I must say it. Welcome to Camp Half-Blood. There. Now, don’t expect me to be glad to see you.”

And he’s just so delightfully crotchety.  😀

Chiron explains to Percy that he went to Yancy just to teach Percy, because Percy is that awesomely special and I guess Chiron just really likes teaching or something.  I’m noticing that all the explanations in this book don’t really explain things.  People just say stuff, with no context, and we’re supposed to take it on faith and nod along, even though it rarely adds more than a smidgeon of knowledge to our understanding.  Okay, Chiron went to teach Percy because he’s “something special.”  What does Chiron do normally?  Why didn’t he actually tell Percy anything useful?  Why did they contact his mother, but not let him in on the deal?

“I’m afraid not, sir,” he said.

 “Sir,” I repeated. I was liking the camp director less and less.

 “Well,” he told me, “it is, along with gladiator fighting and Pac-Man, one of the greatest games ever invented by humans.

Phoo to you, Percy.  D’s awesome. 

They all sit down to play pinochle together.  Percy begs for more answers, and once again, everyone takes their sweet time telling him anything.

I’m convinced they just get off doing this.  I guess after you take in enough pre-teen demigods, answering the same questions over and over again gets annoying.  Got to keep your sanity somehow.

Chiron neatly side-steps the question of Big-G God and goes on to explain about little-g gods of Olympus, saying they’re something different entirely and Big-G is who-knows-what.  So that’s nice.

“Yes, quite. The gods we discussed in Latin class.”

Seriously, what did they teach in that Latin class? I took Latin in high school.  We learned Latin, the language.  Chiron seems to have turned it into a pure Greek Mythology class, which makes no sense, seeing as how Latin was the language of the Romans.  Did Chiron just magic the school administration so that no one would question his lesson plans?

“Science!” Mr. D scoffed. “And tell me, Perseus Jackson”—I flinched when he said my real name, which I never told anybody—“what will people think of your ‘science’ two thousand years from now?”

…that it actually existed.  It’s science.  The whole point of it is that you can prove it.  Even if it turns out 2,000 years from now that we’re all kinds of wrong, at least we’ll still be doing science.

I mean, at least we’re not saying that protons have a positive charge because they fucked your sister.

“I wouldn’t like it. But I don’t believe in gods.”

 “Oh, you’d better,” Mr. D murmured. “Before one of them incinerates you.”

Okay, and here’s where I have problems with the whole series, with the basic underlying concept.

WHY DON’T WE BELIEVE IN THE GODS NO MORE?

Clearly, in this book’s world, they are real.  They’re even still coming down and fucking people and making half-god babies.  They’re flinging lightning and calling up storms and controlling the forces of nature.  If Zeus wants people to believe in him, then he can just start zapping people.  So what happened?

Now, if the gods…I don’t know, all took a nap at the same time, and they came back and we’re modern day humans and forgot about them, okay.  Maybe they could decide not to upset that, because we humans would freak the fuck out and probably light the world on fire.  But 2,000 years ago?  When people started to stop believing?  What happened then?

Anyway, we find out D is here at the camp because he’s being punished for being too horny.  He’s thoroughly unimpressed with Percy for figuring out his name, and continues to be snarky and cranky.

“Then, well, duh! Percy Jackson. Did you think I was Aphrodite, perhaps?”

I just love this guy.

I saw visions of grape vines choking unbelievers to death

Seriously, if they’re ticked at not being worshiped anymore, then why did this stop?  The reason we stopped in real life is, you know, because they’re not really and not choking people.

D leaves and takes Grover with him, while Chiron explains to Percy about how Mount Olympus moves to wherever the biggest superpower is.  Well, that’s not exactly right…

“Well, certainly. The gods move with the heart of the West.”

 “The what?”

 “Come now, Percy. What you call ‘Western civilization.’ Do you think it’s just an abstract concept? No, it’s a living force. A collective consciousness that has burned bright for thousands of years.

Uh, kind of ethnocentric there, aren’t you, Mr. Chiron?  I know we think ‘Western civilization’ is awesome and all, but it turns out we’re not the only civilized, intelligent badasses in history.  And yet this book gives the distinct impression that ‘Western civilization’ is the only one that matters, and thus the gods follow it.

Is there another pantheon that lives in China somewhere?  Was there a pantheon that lived in South America that got killed off?  Do the various sets share power over the elements?

Is there only one, but it follows the West because only the West matters?

Yeah, fucking creepy.

So after explaining that White Guys are literally the center of the universe, Chiron says he’ll take Percy to his cabin, then stands up and reveals that he’s a centaur.

All while still failing to tell Percy that he’s a half-blood.  It’s got to be intentional.