Percy moves out of Cabin 11 and into Cabin 3, where he is master of his own schedule and has plenty of space and can do whatever he wants.  But he hates it, because “I’d been separated out as if I had some rare disease.”  Really?  Are you just going to complain about everything now?  No matter what happens, Percy has to frame it as some particular hardship directed at him.  It’s not even that this isn’t bad, because come on, the camp got attacked by a hellhound.  But Percy goes on and on about how he is put out by this, not about how it means the camp isn’t as safe as everyone thought it was.

Although, I guess that does make him a pretty accurate 12 year-old.

Luke and Annabeth give him personal lessons in sword-fighting and Greek, which makes me wonder if this camp has any actual teachers.  Why is there no Greek Language class taught by a mythical creature?  Why is there no sword-fighting instructor, instead of what amounts to a TA?  It’s like this book thinks there can only be a limited number of characters, so they have to get reused for various different positions.

Someone left a newspaper clipping of an article about Sally and Percy going missing.  For some reason, this makes him really mad.  I guess because of this line?

Ms. Jackson’s husband, Gabe Ugliano, claims that his stepson, Percy Jackson, is a troubled child who has been kicked out of numerous boarding schools and has expressed violent tendencies in the past.

Yes, and?  What part of that statement is supposed to be untrue?  You’ve been kicked out of six schools and in the first chapter you pushed Nancy into a fountain.

Percy goes to bed and has a prophetic dream about Zeus and Poseidon wrestling on a beach.  He tries to get them to stop, but no one listens. 

The ground shook. Laughter came from somewhere under the earth, and a voice so deep and evil it turned my blood to ice.

I can’t remember well enough to tell, but that had better be Chronos instead of Hades laughing. 

Grover comes the next morning to take Percy to Mr. D.  D says that Percy presents a problem, on account of him existing, and he wants to turn Percy into a dolphin to fix things.  But Chiron has another solution, so Percy can pick that if he wants, but Mr. D is busy and has to go to a meeting. 

This all feels a bit strange to me.  We don’t really know what the problem is with Percy, except that the big three agreed not to have kids.  The reasoning was because said kids are too powerful, but the deal with Thalia was simply that Hades sent monsters after her.  So I’m not real clear on Percy’s case.  Do they think his presence will make Hades and Zeus mad?  Do they think he’s a danger to the camp?  Do they think he’s going to upset some balance?  Do they think he’ll go power-mad and take over the world?

The answer to that question is kind of important when taken along with the ‘what to do’ question.  If Percy, by dint of his very existence, is some sort of reality-warping monster-attracter, then the right thing to do with him is very different than if he’s just got a lot of potential.  I’m very much in favor of the “needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few” philosophy.  If Percy is going to get people killed just by living, then it really sucks for him, but something really should be done about that.  If Percy’s only threat is what he might personally do, or what others might do to him, that’s another matter entirely.

But without a clear context for Mr. D’s whole “I’d just get rid of you but Chiron won’t let me” comment, the book actually makes it sound like context doesn’t matter.   Like, no matter what the threat is, Percy is just so important that we should try and keep him alive anyway.  This issue is framed so it revolves around Percy, not the camp (or the world, or humanity) as a whole.

So, Chiron’s solution is to offer Percy a quest.  He explains to Percy that Zeus and Poseidon are fighting over Zeus’s missing lightning bolt.  Zeus believes that Percy is the one who stole the bolt, because gods have to get humans to do their dirty work.  So, naturally, they’d be more likely to get their own kids to do stuff.  From Zeus’s perspective, it makes a lot of sense, but Percy keeps thinking it should be obvious simply because he knows he didn’t do it.

Weird.  We’re finally getting full explanations and straight-forward details.  I guess the book got sick of its own padding?  I mean, I know I shouldn’t complain, but it’s a complete shift in style that came right out of nowhere.  And now that we see it’s possible for the characters to act this way, it makes the first several chapters even more annoying.

It started to rain. Volleyball players stopped their game and stared in stunned silence at the sky.

I had brought this storm to Half-Blood Hill. Zeus was punishing the whole camp because of me. I was furious.

…So, the implication being that when it storms elsewhere, that’s also Zeus punishing someone?  Or perhaps that Camp Half-Blood is just so superspecial and delicate that it can’t take a storm like every other place on the planet?

So, Percy’s quest is to find the bolt and take it back to Zeus.  Having accepted the quest, he has to go talk to the Oracle, so he goes to the attic.

The attic was filled with Greek hero junk: armor stands covered in cobwebs; once-bright shields pitted with rust; old leather steamer trunks plastered with stickers saying ITHAKA, CIRCE’S ISLE, and LAND OF THE AMAZONS. One long table was stacked with glass jars filled with pickled things—severed hairy claws, huge yellow eyes, various other parts of monsters. A dusty mounted trophy on the wall looked like a giant snake’s head, but with horns and a full set of shark’s teeth. The plaque read, HYDRA HEAD #1, WOODSTOCK, N.Y., 1969.

I like the details in this book.  I think that’s really the strong point of the novel.  It doesn’t always follow through in the best way, take full advantage, but the concept of mixing Greek mythology and modern mundanity is really clever.  Demigods?  Send them to summer camp.  Cap of Invisibility?  Make it a baseball cap.  Going to a mythical magic land?  Well, you’ll need some luggage.  I really, really do like that aspect of this world.

The Oracle happens to be a shriveled up old mummy which sits up and talks.  Points for uber creepiness.

The Oracle makes an illusion in the shape of Gabe and his friends playing poker.  Because…reasons.  Anyway, the poker game ends up giving him his prophesy.

You shall go west, and face the god who has turned.

You shall find what was stolen, and see it safely returned.

You shall be betrayed by one who calls you a friend.

And you shall fail to save what matters most, in the end.

I like prophesies.  They’re fun to work with.  Especially ones that are supposed to be a puzzle, that are supposed to actually change things or help the quester by virtue of having been spoken.  However, when prophesies are only there to sound ominous, I get annoyed, because then it’s just the author making pretty sounds for the sake of sounding pretty.  This one doesn’t kick off Percy’s quest; he was already set to go.  Now, again, I can’t remember the end all that well, so it could be that this prophesy actually has a purpose besides rhyming.  We’ll have to find out.

Percy goes downstairs and only tells Chiron the first two lines of the prophesy.

“Very well, Percy. But know this: the Oracle’s words often have double meanings. Don’t dwell on them too much. The truth is not always clear until events come to pass.”

So…if there’s no point in analyzing them and everything only makes sense after it happens, then what’s the point of getting a prophesy beforehand?

They conclude that Hades must have stolen the bolt, because he’s a petty and jealous god who isn’t happy with being King of the Underworld.  Because this book needs an obvious villain and, damnit, we can’t have a nuanced portrayal of death in a kids’ book.  I guess.  Anyway, the entrance to the underworld is in Los Angeles, but Percy can’t fly there because Zeus would probably slap the plane down.  He picks Grover to go with him, Annabeth volunteers to be the third member of the party, and thus we’re set up for the meat of the plot to actually begin.