February 20th, 2010
by candace
The Sea of Monsters Percy Jackson and the Olympians Book 2 by Rick Riordan
Rating: 
The second installment of the Percy Jackson series starts of with Percy back living a normal life. Except it isn’t exactly normal, no blood thirsty monsters have been after him but he has found himself best friends with a rather strange boy named Tyson. Until one day at his hippie-dippy prep school a game of dodge ball turns deadly. Luckily his strange friend is able to help him escape death, and Annabeth comes and brings them both to camp.
Bad things are happening, the camp is constantly under attack because someone has poisoned Thalia’s tree. Clarisse is charged with a quest to find the golden fleece and save the tree and the camp. Unfortunately for Clarisse, Percy has a psychic link with Grover and so knows where the fleece is. Grover needs their help as much as they need his location. Percy, Tyson, and Annabeth set off on an unsanctioned quest so save their friend, the camp and basically the future for all half-bloods.
This was a good story. I really liked how the mythology moved to lesser known stories. It’s like if you read the first one and you got hooked because you knew a little of the mythology and then you read the second one you want to know all about the stories behind the stories to get the full effect of the book. History teachers should be thanking Rick Riordan for the interest he sparks into the subject.
The ending is great, you get a satisfying completion to the story of the second book and a good hook to read the next installment. It’s a fast read and very entertaining.
What did you think? Did you see the movie of the first book?
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January 2nd, 2010
by candace
The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan
Rating:
Not on the List
I liked this book, although to review it I have to look at it through the eyes of a child. It’s a sizable book (400 pages) for the age group 9-12. Full of twists and turns, lots of excitement and of course a little despair. What was so exciting about reading this book was that I could see myself as a kid, learning about the greek gods and Mt. Olympus in school and then reading this book and saying I know this stuff, it makes sense. There’s a connection between learning and entertainment there that I think makes kids want to keep reading. There are slight variations on the gods because of the time the book takes place but all the key markers are there and you can recognize each one individually. That has to be rewarding for kids, I mean it was for me and my last classics class was probably 6 years ago.
There is a bit of predictability in the story line. **Spoiler** For instance when you find out that his name is actually Perseus Jackson you know immediately that he has to have some encounter with Medusa. Knowing the story of Perseus and Medusa made you want to know how this encounter was going to unfold. I liked that about this book, taking the stories of the greek gods but putting a twist on them. And by the way, how cool does that camp sound? Apart from the lodgings part.
Sarah sent me previews for the movie before I even finished the books so I had to wait to watch them but she’s right the movie looks pretty cool. The cast is shaping up to be pretty impressive. I can’t wait to see how they uncap the pen on the big screen, for some reason I’m envisioning some kind of lightsaber-esque stuff. I was going to read the next one immediately but then I got the new Dan Brown and had to read that. It kind of snowballed from there.
What did you think?
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