Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief - Rick Riordan

Published by Puffin Books: Great Britain, 2013 (2005).
Book 1 in the 'Percy Jackson' series. Followed by 'Percy Jackson and the Sea of Monsters.'

This year our school library has been a little less available than in past years due to some building projects on the go in the school, so I have slowly been collecting a variety of books that (hopefully) my students will enjoy. And at times, when the classes are doing independent work and I don't need to be monitoring them as much, I've been reading some of those books for myself. 

Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief is the first in the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series, and was made into a movie which I have seen. However, it is one of those movies that fans of the books were relatively unhappy with, and having read the original book I can now understand why. The differences are numerous. In the book Percy is only 12, Grover the satyr already has his horns, and many elements of the book's quest are ignored entirely or changed drastically; Persephone doesn't appear in the book, but Ares does, there is no hydra but there is an 'Echidna', and only Percy goes to Mount Olympus.

If you haven't read the book or seen the movie, very little of this may make sense, so here are the basics: Percy is a dyslexic 12 year old who eventually learns he is the son of one of the Olympian gods (which one remains a mystery in the book far longer than in the movie, and in fact far longer than it should have taken Percy to realize). After escaping from New York with his mother and satyr friend Grover, he trains with other young demigods, before going on a quest to find Zeus' missing lightning bolt. Along the way he encounters various updated Greek monsters (monsters are drawn to demigods in this story, explaining why our heroes encounter them so often) and gods, and must solve the mystery of what the Oracle's prophecy spoken to him means.

The book has a lot more to it than the movie, delving further into Greek mythology, including some fairly obscure elements, and it ends in a satisfying place, without giving everyone quite as saccharine an ending as the movie. It also sets up a 'big bad' not hinted at in the movie at all, but who will likely play an important role in later entries of the series. This is definitely a book aimed at older children or young teenagers, but is also one I enjoyed for what it was. I will likely read the sequel before too long.

Completed 29 June 2022.

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