Star Rating: 4/5
Genre: Middle Grade/YA, Science Fiction & Fantasy
Buy the book: Amazon

So a few months back I did a review for The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan, and I loved it. Sadly, I wasn't able to read any of the others in the series while I was there. I've just been back home to visit for a week, however, and my awesome nephew was good enough to loan the rest of the series to me while I was there, and man did I chew through these babies. Every minute I could get, I was reading. In the car, late into the night, I needed to get this series done, and I'm really pleased I did.

I genuinely enjoyed the stories and the characters. I thought the latter of these were the better of the two. I also have an even deeper appreciation of Riordan's characterization work since watching the two Percy Jackson films that have come out last night. Ugh...Hollywood can be such an evil place that absolutely mangles good characters. Granted, sometimes they do a good job, but not with those films. Nathan Fillion as Hermes is a saving grace. Anyway, loved the characterizations as well as how deep he got into the mythology. The books were all really engaging and kept me guessing as to who was going to do what. Loved that.

I did have a few issues that strongly pervaded the books, however, and took me out of the stories. Firstly, I ended up having a lot of issues seeing the Greek gods as caring parental figures because they're so capricious. I know because they're immortal, mortal lives, even those of the children of their fellow gods, are nothing, but it really lost any sense of humanity the gods might have had for me. Even Hermes, who seemed the most engaged with his kids, was still really distant. And on that same note, they have so many kids!!! Holy cow, guys, can't you keep it in your pants for five minutes?! I cannot believe that any of the gods truly loved the mortals who bore them children because there were gobs of children all around the same age from the same parents. That got to be a little unbelievable for me, made me lose connection with them. And then there's Hephaestus. So I was under the impression that he was loyal to Aphrodite. I mean, he set a trap for her because she was cheating, but turns out he's got a gaggle of offspring of his own? That was a big issue for me too.

All in all, though, the stories were really interesting and exciting and kept me hooked. I liked them so much I want to read Riordan's other work, though I would probably buy them on Kindle...except that I really love physical books. The struggle is real.

Thanks for reading!