Ever since I put down Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, I’ve been looking for “the next one.”  You know, the next series that I could really get into, that would capture my imagination and inject a little magic into my days and maybe be my excuse for staying up nights to read.  First, I thought it might be the Tunnels books, but the first one of the series was one of the few books that I have really, honestly hated, and I never picked up any of the others.  Then, I thought it might be the Hunger Games trilogy, which was fantastic, sure, but it wasn’t what I’ve come to think of as Potteresque.  It was too dark, too violent.  (Oh, sure, Harry Potter books have their moments of darkness and violence – but not on Hunger Games scale.  And it’s okay; I did really like the Hunger Games books.  But they aren’t really in the Potter style.)

Then I found the Percy Jackson series.  These books had been on my radar for quite some time, but they kept getting bumped by other books.  Finally, I decided that the best way to get to them sooner rather than later was to listen to them on audio during my long commutes.  (This isn’t a post about the audio production, but I’ll just say this: I wasn’t a fan.  The narrator did that thing I hate, where he talked in a squeaky voice to represent a woman, and that just makes me gag.  Plus, he read some pretty strange and/or stereotypical accents into the characters.  Annabeth’s stepmom, who is described as having dark hair and being from San Francisco, got a pretty offensive “Asian” accent, as did half-blood Ethan Nakamura.  Some of the other half-blood campers were inexplicably read as being from Texas or Australia.  It was just weird.  But the story was good enough to get me past my frustration with the audio narration, even though I did plenty of eye-rolling at some of the voices.)

What I really want to talk about, though, is the story – which was fantastic.  At the beginning of The Lightning Thief, the first book in the series, sixth-grader Percy Jackson is on the verge of being kicked out of yet another school.  Percy has dyslexia and ADHD and can’t seem to stay on a teacher’s good side.  Trouble follows him wherever he goes.  Then one day, his nasty math teacher turns into an actual demon and tries to kill him, and his Latin teacher gives him a ballpoint pen that turns into a sword.  What the…?, you’re thinking.  That pretty much sums up Percy’s thoughts, too.  It turns out that Percy is a half-blood, or demigod.  He’s the child of an Olympian god and a mortal.  Since Percy knows who his mom is, it follows that his dad is the immortal parent.  Percy is whisked off to Camp Half-Blood, a summer retreat for other demigods, where he trains in fighting monsters (who follow half-bloods wherever they go).  But his stay at camp is short, because it turns out that someone has stolen Zeus’s master lightning bolt, and Percy is the prime suspect.  To clear his name, he’ll have to journey to the underworld and retrieve Zeus’s property.  And even if he manages to complete his quest, it’s just the beginning of his problems… because a new threat is rising that could spell the end of Mount Olympus.

That was a rather long introduction to the point of this post: what I found really compelling about these books.  There were a few things:

I loved the underlying mythology.  I’ll admit that Greek myths are one of the holes in my reading experience.  Greek mythology was a semester-long English class in my high school, but I didn’t take it.  It was the “Regents” level course, and I was in “Honors” English, so we had a different program of study.  So my knowledge of Greek myths is pretty much limited to a children’s book I haven’t read in over twenty years.  But from what I remember, the mythology in this series is sound.  Percy draws on the stories of old Greek heroes to help him in his quests, and Riordan nails the details of each story (at least, as far as my limited knowledge attests).  I’m sure he spent buckets of time researching Greek mythology, and it shows.  These books are silly and fun, but they’re also smart, and don’t think otherwise.

The characterization of the gods was spot-on.  Riordan takes the gods and makes them modern, but he keeps the essence of each.  Ares, the god of war, rides a motorcycle and calls everyone “Punk.”  Aphrodite is obsessed with her makeup.  Apollo tools around in a red convertible “sun chariot” and recites goofy poetry.  Artemis is a too-serious twelve-year-old girl.  Hephaestus is covered in motor oil and talks like he’s from New Jersey (one of the few accents in the audio production that I actually thought was funny), Dionysus is serving as camp director for 100 years after being ordered to dry out, Zeus is a slick executive in a pin-striped suit, and Poseidon wears a fishing vest and sports a terrific tan.  If the gods really were alive and active today, they’d be exactly as Riordan paints them.

The central conflict was… dare I say… COMPLEX.  So, these are YA books, and you’d think that as a result, they’d be pretty simplistic.  The stereotype is that YA adventures tell stories of good and evil struggling.  The good characters are definitely good, and the evil characters are clearly evil.  It’s my one critique of Harry Potter: there’s very little grey there – Voldy and his cronies are bad to the bone, and Harry is never tempted by their messages.  Sure, Sirius is a complex character and Harry deals with his realization that his dad bullied Snape, and of course there’s the big surprise about Snape at the end (oh, simmer down, if you haven’t read those books or at least seen the movies by now…) but there’s no question that the Order of the Phoenix is the right side to be on if you’ve got any kind of ethics.

Not so with Percy Jackson.  Early in the series, Percy discovers that Kronos is rising and planning a Titan takeover.  And the weird thing is, quite a few half-bloods are defecting from camp and joining the Titan cause.  Why?  If Kronos succeeds, Olympus will be destroyed and civilization as we know it will end.  Sounds like a pretty easy choice, right?  You should fight for Olympus.  And it is a pretty easy choice for Percy, because he has a good relationship with his dad (I won’t spoil the books by revealing Percy’s Olympian parent’s identity, but it’s pretty obvious from the first chapter who his dad is, and it comes out early in the first book, so).  But those half-bloods who’ve chosen to throw their lots in with the Titans don’t enjoy the trusting relationship that Percy has with his godly parent.  They feel unloved and abandoned by their parents, and it’s not too far a leap for them to rise up against them.  Or they’re the children of “minor gods” (like Ethan, a son of Nemesis) and have no place at Camp Half-Blood, and can you really blame them for being angry?

Sure, the Titans are, in general, pretty nasty pieces of work.  But the gods aren’t perfect.  They’re petulant, uppity, overly sensitive, and can be downright cruel.  At the end of the third book, just after Percy has saved Mount Olympus (again), they spend a chapter debating whether to kill him.  Bit of a disconnect there, right?  Percy’s loyalty doesn’t waver, but by the fifth book he seems to have begun to understand why some others might not be as steadfast in their support of Mount Olympus.  He learns more about his enemy Luke, and he comes to understand why Luke turned to Kronos – which is knowledge Percy will need when it comes time to confront Luke once and for all.  And as Percy – and the reader – gain more understanding of the legitimate grievances harbored by half-bloods on the other side, they are able to be more compassionate.  The question is, will their compassion lose the war for them?  I won’t tell you what happens – you’ll have to read the books – but I will tell you that The Last Olympian was one of the only books that’s ever prompted me to cry when one of the villains dies.  Because by the end, you can see clearly that the Olympian gods have lots of faults and have made some major mistakes, and while they may be the better alternative, they’re going to need to make some big changes in the future or else face another war. 

The Percy Jackson books were deceptively complex.  I finished The Last Olympian more than two weeks ago, and I’m still thinking about it.  I loved these books because they were funny and imaginative, but also because they were far more thought-provoking than the usual YA offerings.  And I’ll be going back for re-reads; I’m sure there were plenty of jokes I didn’t catch, and plenty of philosophy too.