…This review is not turning out anything like I thought it would.  I sound a lot more vicious in this book than I actually mean to.

So, here’s what I think happened.  This book has some really, really basic fails in it but without many of the trope/message fails of other stuff I’ve tackled.  There’s the stuff with Demeter and Aphrodite, the bits with dyslexia that will never stop annoying me, and a few throwaway lines here and there.  But mostly?  It’s just your basic “lol, no, smugglers don’t usually stop to unload zebras in the middle of The Strip.”

And that doesn’t bother people.  That doesn’t hit rage buttons.  It doesn’t even do it for me.  People by and large tend to be forgiving of their entertainment.  As long as it’s not spiteful or damaging wrongness, who cares if the price of the train tickets is wrong?  You know what, even I don’t care.  I’m not going through this book with a fine-tooth comb – the wrong things stand out plenty clearly – so I’m not scrambling for things to say just to be hateful.  I’m just saying things most readers would be perfectly happy to forgive, and this book doesn’t have much that I can nostalgically squee over to balance things out. 

That, unfortunately, made this book a very poor choice for this kind of blog.  I’m willing to point out any flavor of wrong that comes up in a book, but a review this intensive should have something else on top of research fails to justify it.  I shall have to be more careful with my poll selections in the future.

HOWEVER, we’re only six chapters from the end.  Kind of late to back out now. 

  So the kids use their Lotus CasinoCard to hop a taxi to LA.  It has a literally infinite spending limit, so that ends up working.  On the one hand, shit, I’d lose five days for one of those.  On the other, it kind of turns the whole casino side-trip into a deus ex machina.   “How to get them to LA?  Uh…magic casino that just gives them stuff and presents no hardships.  Yeah, that’ll work.”

“Get us there fast, and you can keep the change.”

The…change that’s leftover from the debit card…

In the car, they talk about Percy’s dreams, and they try really, really hard to convince the reader that it really is Hades, no, really, don’t look at the very obvious foreshadowing. 

Oh, but while you’re here, smell this red herring.

Annabeth, despite her clear misgivings, says that no matter what the answer is in the Underworld, because IT’S SO TOTALLY HADES YOU GUYS but just on the off chance that it wasn’t, Percy was still dreaming of dead spirits.  So something’s going on down there.

They get to Santa Monica Pier, and Percy decides to just walk straight into the water after staring at the ocean for a while.

Percy discovers once again that he can breathe underwater, then a shark comes up and takes him off to the edge of the continental shelf.  There he meets the same nereid that talked to him in the river in St. Louis. 

Suddenly I remembered faces in the waves off Montauk Beach when I was a little boy, reflections of smiling women. Like so many of the weird things in my life, I’d never given it much thought before.

Apparently he forgot to mention it to us, too.  We even went to the beach with him at the start of the book, and there wasn’t a peep.

The nereid gives Percy three pearls that will…do something. 

“What will happen?”

 “That,” she said, “depends on the need.

So…deus ex machina bombs.

Then she tells him not to pay attention to the man behind the curtain red herring and swims off when Percy tries to ask her questions.

Back at the surface, they wander around looking for the entrance to the underworld.  They know it’s a place called DOA Recording Studios, because that’s what Percy got off the shipping labels back at Em’s place, but no one’s heard of it.  Presumably because they just keep walking around asking random bus drivers, instead of getting a phone book out or something.

Then they see a news segment interviewing Gabe, who is going on and on about how Percy is just such a juvenile delinquent.

Is Percy Jackson a delinquent, a terrorist, or perhaps the brainwashed victim of a frightening new cult? When we come back, we chat with a leading child psychologist. Stay tuned, America.”

No, really, WHERE IS THIS COMING FROM?  I could see this if it had only started up after St. Louis.  He was involved in an explosion there.  But since they were calling ‘danger’ and ‘terrorist’ from the very start, it just ends up bizarre.

And why is ‘delinquent’ on that list?  Apparently it’s just so easy to confuse ‘acting out like a teenager’ with ‘terrorist’ in this world.

It reminded me of Ares. It wasn’t enough for L.A. to be big; it had to prove it was big by being loud and strange and difficult to navigate, too.

Okay, so that one’s true.  Mwahahahahaha. 

Before I knew it, we were surrounded. A gang of kids had circled us. Six of them in all—white kids with expensive clothes and mean faces. Like the kids at Yancy Academy: rich brats playing at being bad boys.

Wait, you’re wandering around downtown LA at night and that’s all that attacks you?  Um…scary?

They distract the rich boys and run off to some place called Crusty’s Water Bed Palace.  Crusty himself, a really sleazy looking dude in a bad suit, comes out and tries to get them to lay on water beds.  When Annabeth and Percy don’t want to, he snaps ropes out of nowhere and ties them down.  Because of course they found another monster.  What were you expecting?

“But who can pronounce Procrustes? Bad for business. Now ‘Crusty,’ anybody can say that.”

Got to say, I’d rather buy from a Procrustes than a Crusty, no matter how it’s pronounced.

Crusty wants his customers to fit his beds exactly, which means stretching them out or lopping off the extras.  Percy tries to sweet talk him and claims that makes perfect sense, of course, and the beds are all just so very nice and finely made, but surely that extra, extra fine one with the special features can’t really do that?  Maybe Crusty should demonstrate.

Maybe Crusty doesn’t get many actual conversations, since he ties down everyone who comes in, and that’s why he falls for that?

Either way, Percy gets him tied to his own bed and then lops his head off.  As they look around, they find a monster-specific phone book, and DOA Recording is listed there.  As luck would have it, it’s only a block away.