The next few days I settled into a routine that felt almost normal, if you don’t count the fact that I was getting lessons from satyrs, nymphs, and a centaur.

…  No, Percy, that’s kind of a big deal.  The way you phrased it there makes it sound like you’re learning how to make macaroni bracelets from a centaur.  Which is kind of a massive waste of the whole ‘go to camp, learn to save the world’ premise. 

Annabeth was right about my dyslexia: Ancient Greek wasn’t that hard for me to read. At least, no harder than English.

But failing to read English is what got you labeled with dyslexia in the first place! 

So, they go through a handful of physical activities around camp and decide he’s not good at any of them except canoeing, which isn’t all that heroic.  But he’s having fun adjusting anyway.  He even thinks about his mom some, in the context of wondering if there’s a way to bring her back from the Underworld.  Still rather mild for ‘dead mother,’ but at least it’s something!

Later they have a swordfighting lesson, and Percy determines that none of their swords are awesome enough for him.  Well, he says they don’t fit, but in a narrative sense it amounts to the same thing.

Luke showed me thrusts and parries and shield blocks the hard way. With every swipe, I got a little more battered and bruised.

So…they just went right into beating him?  Luke’s the best swordsman around, and he doesn’t understand the value of drills and practice before you go right into sparing?  I mean, there’s some value into the idea of ‘if you hit them, the lesson will stick,’ but you still have to teach the lesson first.  (And I mean that only in a martial class sense.  I’m not trying to advocate child abuse.)

Then when they get the whole group together so Luke can show them all a certain move, Percy…uh, goes ninja again.  Everything slows down and he darts in and disarms Luke.  On his first day, with a sword that isn’t balanced right, against the guy who’s supposed to be the best swordsman in the past 300 years.

I get the appeal of giving him god-powers and such, but why do these powers equate to skill?  The two are not nearly the same thing, and writing this way is just a shortcut to get around making the character actually train and learn.  I mean, it wouldn’t be that hard to have his super-reflex-time-slow-down power be a factor, but still have him fumble with the actual moves.  In fact, that could be really interesting, trying to spar against someone who’s super-fast but doing the moves wrong. 

The next day Percy chats with Grover.  Poor Grover’s kind of stuck, because Mr. D ruled that he didn’t succeed or fail at getting Percy to camp.  Now he’s stuck with Percy until something actually happens, so he can get ‘graded’ on that.

“Number eight, the silver one, belongs to Artemis,” he said. “She vowed to be a maiden forever. So of course, no kids.

I always wondered if the author just forgot about Athena being a virgin goddess, too, and just retconed things later.  I mean, it makes sense, because Artemis is a bit more ‘no dudes’ than just in regards to sex, whereas Athena is more inclined to get along with males, but it’s not portrayed like that here.  They clearly equate virginity to no kids.

Are those the Big Three?”

 Grover tensed. We were getting close to a touchy subject. “No. One of them, number two, is Hera’s,” he said. “That’s another honorary thing. She’s the goddess of marriage, so of course she wouldn’t go around having affairs with mortals. That’s her husband’s job. When we say the Big Three, we mean the three powerful brothers, the sons of Kronos.”

But…Hera isn’t powerful?  I don’t know.  I get what they’re saying, but the juxtaposition of those two comments is just really unfortunate.

“No. [Hades] doesn’t have a throne on Olympus, either. He sort of does his own thing down in the Underworld. If he did have a cabin here …” Grover shuddered. “Well, it wouldn’t be pleasant. Let’s leave it at that.”

Hades wasn’t considered responsible for death, but rather for the care and keeping of souls after they died.  He mostly just got mad if people tried to leave.  The Greeks feared him, but only because they didn’t really want to meet him too soon.  He was considered extremely just and fair and responsible for maintaining balance.  Also, he was the god of riches, and people love riches. 

Plus, let’s not forget, the Underworld includes this mythology’s closest analog to heaven.  Guys, come on, he’s the ruler of heaven.  Stop treating him like he’s the devil.

It’s one thing to not like a god like Hades, to avoid calling his attention by saying his name, but this seems to be implying that the guy fucks shit up wherever he goes. 

Grover tells about the pact between the Big Three and how Zeus broke it by fathering Thalia.  When Hades found out, he got super angry and sent a bunch of monsters after her.  Okay, that’s fitting.  Hades hates it when oaths are broken and people try to cheat him.  Thalia almost got to the camp, but she didn’t quite make it and turned herself into the big tree instead and now her spirit protects the camp.

Two things.  Minor one first.  Is this the reason Hades would fuck up the camp?  Because he’s mad that Thalia is protecting it, not just because he’s playacting at being Satan?  Because that’s not really clear.

Second, there’s been two people sacrificed in this book so far, and both of them have been female.  Both did it to protect people (Sally to Percy, Thalia to Luke and Annabeth) but that doesn’t really change the trope.  Just because their stories are good when taken in isolation, that doesn’t mean they aren’t part of a larger culture narrative.  Even if your story is compelling and your details are good, the end result is still that you’ve added to a trend that says the strongest thing a woman can do is die.

A million really good stories about women sacrificing themselves is still a million stories about women sacrificing themselves.

Then it’s time for capture the flag.  All the cabins are aligned with either Ares or Athena.

Demeter’s kids had the edge with nature skills and outdoor stuff, but they weren’t very aggressive.  

Poison.  Ivy.

Also, bears.

Aphrodite’s sons and daughters I wasn’t too worried about. They mostly sat out every activity and checked their reflections in the lake and did their hair and gossiped.

This goddess started whole wars to satisfy her vanity.  She has a long and sordid history of fucking up humanity in numerous ways.  She’s a goddess, not a powderpuff.

Hephaestus’s kids weren’t pretty, and there were only four of them, but they were big and burly from working in the metal shop all day. They might be a problem.

So, I mentioned before that there’s a lot of misogyny that’s directed against femininity instead of women specifically, so people will accept a woman as strong, but only if she acts masculine.  This is another form of that same problem: seeing brute strength as the only thing to be concerned about.  Not only is it pretty short-sighted in a tactical sense, but it encourages a rather violent culture in our own young boys.

I want the version of this story where the Aphrodite cabin is in charge of making sure everyone gets along and stays focused, and the Demeter cabin makes the trees throw pinecones at the opposing team.  Then bears.

And bees.  And hornets.  And spiders.  And cougars.  And crows.

Seriously, why would you fuck with Mother Nature?

They get started, and Percy is set to guarding the border, which just so happens to be a stream. 

There was no way anybody would actually attack me, would they? I mean, Olympus had to have liability issues, right?

Hon, your own grade schools didn’t have that.

Her ugly pig eyes

*sigh*

So five kids from Ares show up to pound him, and they inform him that they’re not really concerned with the flag, they just really want to beat him up for the bathroom stunt.  They start in on him, but then they knock him into the stream, and once again he gets ninja powers, because fuck it, gods just do that.  He kicks all their asses while naming them as Ugly One through Ugly Five in the narration.  Now their appearance is literally defining them. 

Luke shows up with the other team’s flag, and it turns out Percy was supposed to get attacked, he was just there to distract half the Ares cabin so they could nab the flag.  Yay, Percy’s team wins.  In the middle of celebrating, Annabeth notes that Percy acts a lot better in water than out of it, and got healed, too, but before she can do more than just figure it out, a monster shows up.  It runs at Percy and almost gets him, but then Chiron shoots it down. 

The monster is a hellhound, and someone had to summon it from inside the camp, so that’s highly suspicious.  But before we spend much time on that, a glowy green trident appears over Percy’s head, proclaiming him the son of Poseidon. 

So, as we get further into this, the pacing issues seem to be clearing up a little.  I like the reveal of Percy’s father.  Older observers would have figured it out from the water references, but younger readers might not, and it’s a good point in the story to have this revealed.  Hopefully the pace will go better from here on out.