It’s funny how humans can wrap their mind around things and fit them into their version of reality. Chiron had told me that long ago.

Long ago, you guys.  I mean, like, ancient history ago.  It was like two whole weeks in the past, or something. 

This whole line still bothers me.  It’s one thing to say that they’ve got magic that tricks people into not seeing godly stuff, but to say we do it on our own is just silly.  Humans are pretty damn good observers; it’s why we stopped believing in Greek gods in the first place.  We noticed they aren’t real.  Also, when you match it up with stuff earlier in the book about how the gods are out of sorts with how people don’t believe them?  Well, geniuses, maybe if you didn’t continually hide your presence that would change.

The end of this line is that the news now believes that Ares is a kidnapper and has stopped calling Percy a terrorist.  Again, to absolutely no point, because when has that whole subplot ever had any sort of actual relevance?  After the fight on the beach, the police take the kids into custody and send them back to New York, but they would have done that even without the head-scratching “let’s call a 12 year-old a terrorist” line. 

They wouldn’t have done it that same day, because paperwork is a hellish monster that must be fed, but still.  They shouldn’t have done that in this line, either.

The police and reporters were so moved that they passed around the hat and raised money for three tickets on the next plane to New York.

Yes, the police officers saw these three poor ‘kidnap victims,’ underage kids whose legal guardians are in New York anyway, and they sent them off on a plane without supervision, without taking official statements, without taking them to a hospital, without trauma counseling, and without contacting their guardians to arrange for proper, safe transport.

Because, as we’ve covered before, this is a world without lawsuits.  I guess if Percy hadn’t spun a good sob story, the police would have just left them there on the beach with a shrug.

Despite all that drama about how they couldn’t fly to California in the start of the book, they end up flying to New York with no troubles at all in a grand total of three lines.  No complications, no hang-ups, no obstacles.  Um…drama?

At New York, they split up because reasons, and Percy goes to Olympus alone. Percy has more trouble getting on the Empire State Building elevator than he did flying cross-country, but when he shows the security guard the master bolt, he’s allowed through. 

I was standing on a narrow stone walkway in the middle of the air. Below me was Manhattan, from the height of an airplane.

And then Percy simultaneously froze and suffocated, because there’s a reason planes are pressurized. 

Okay, I know, magic.  But it still amuses me.

He sees Olympus off in the distance, and it’s a ‘decapitated mountaintop’ full of Greek mansions.  Actual ancient Greek mansions/city.  All the updating this book did, and yet Olympus is still the same?  I mean, not a bad thing, just doesn’t seem to fit with what the rest of this book has been doing.

I mean, even Zeus and Poseidon, when Percy reaches them, are wearing a pinstripe suit and beach-wear, respectively. 

There’s a bit of banter between the two gods about how Poseidon broke the rules by having Percy, and then Percy gets to tell his story of how it all happened.  Zeus is happy enough about getting his bolt back that he grudgingly allows Percy to keep living, then leaves to go take care of some chores.

Once he’s gone, Poseidon explains that Kronos lives in Tartarus, and tells all about how he’s more Satan-y than Hades and all that.  Which…seems kind of odd, because in past chapters, Percy did that whole ‘knowing look’ when talking about the voice in the pit, but here has to have it explained? 

Percy is convinced that Kronos is finding a way to heal and plots to come back out of the pit, but Poseidon warns him not to talk to Zeus about that.  Then Poseidon tells him that his mother is back at their apartment, because Hades let her go when he got his helm back.  Also, there’s a package waiting for him there.  They have a bit of a heartwarming moment where Poseidon tells Percy that he’s proud of him, without quite being a human-ish father figure, which is really nice.  I mean, he’s a god after all.  He shouldn’t be a regular dad, and this book strikes a nice balance between that distant godliness and still being warm and affectionate. 

Percy gets home and reunites with his mother.  But Gabe is there and being just as cartoonishly awful as anyone could possibly be.  The book is really, really piling it on thick here, pulling out every single half-assed sour line it can think of.

It has to, because it’s trying to justify murder.

This whole scene just pisses me off to no end.  See, Percy’s package with the Medusa head is in his room, and he offers to use it to ‘get rid of’ Gabe.  Even though it’s clear that Gabe’s been hitting Sally, which IS FUCKING ILLEGAL and also DIVORCE IS STILL A THING YOU GUYS.  Sally could bring charges against him and divorce him and go live a life apart from him without resorting to murder.  But the book, for whatever reason, doesn’t want to go that route.  Instead, it’s going to make Gabe just as completely awful as it can manage, in the hopes that no one will notice that SALLY AND PERCY ARE SO TOTALLY PLOTTING HIS STRIAGHT-UP COLD-BLOODED MURDER.

I don’t care how bad a person is.  Don’t murder them.  If you have to kill in self-defense, okay, but there is no possible way you can stretch this situation to fit that description.  If someone is a terrible person, then call the cops on them or walk away.  Or both.  Yes, sometimes that’s really hard to do.  But that doesn’t mean MURDER is actually an acceptable alternative.

Percy goes back to Camp Half-Blood for the rest of the summer, where there’s a big party to celebrate the trio making it back alive.

I was surrounded by my old Hermes cabinmates

Whose names are…um…that one guy…and…um…  Wait, Percy actually cared about those people?

There’s also a “funny” line about how Sally murdered Gabe and then sold his corpse for a lot of money.

And then there’s even more summarizing about how great the rest of summer was.  Grover got his searchers license and leaves for his quest to find Pan.

Percy wanders around, thinking about the prophesy.

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

I had failed to save my mom, but only because I’d let her save herself, and I knew that was the right thing.

Everything about this line disturbs me.  The repeat of the approval of murder, the idea that Sally is what ‘matters most’ in a situation that includes cosmos-wide war…

At the end of summer, while avoiding his decision about staying or not, Percy runs across Luke and his sparkly new sword that can hurt mortals and immortals alike.  They go down to the woods to find ‘something to fight,’ because when you almost die in a quest full of monsters, it’s so totally normal to want to battle more monsters for fun.

Luke gets mopey about his lot in life, then tells Percy he’s going to leave camp.  He calls up a scorpion, at which point Percy finally figures out he’s the ‘friend’ that will betray him from the prophesy.  Luke rants on for a while about how the gods suck and need to be toppled, and the only reason they’re still in power is because they can use the half-bloods to keep doing stuff.  He…actually makes some pretty good sense, before he starts going into pure pity-me emotionality.  I mean, it’s hard to support his argument about the gods generally fucking things up because the worldbuilding is so sparse, but by that same token, there’s not a lot of support for going against what he says, either.  I’d like to hear more about this. 

But I’m not going to be, because that’s not the kind of books these are.  Frankly, I don’t think the target audience would stick around for that kind of a plot line.  Maybe I can find a fanfic or two…

Well, after Luke’s ranting, he has the scorpion sting Percy to kill him and takes off.  Percy manages to get back to camp with the help of nymphs, and then he passes out.

When he wakes up, Annabeth and Chiron are there tending to him.  Percy tells them all about Luke and Kronos.  Chiron knows something, it has to do with the prophesy that included Annabeth back before Percy arrived, but Chiron refuses to talk about it, because we’re back to that plot line where people just withhold information because they can.

Then, with that hook for the next book properly set, Percy and Annabeth get ready to both go home for the school year, promising to return next summer.

And that’s it!  I am done!  All in all, not a bad book.  There’s some terrible moments (COLD BLOODED MURDER) but the parts that work, work really well.  Still, I’ll be happy to move on to Catching Fire on Monday.