So I’ve recently gotten back into reading. Yes, reading. Reading is a form of entertainment just as much as television, music, film, or video games. I’ve been wanting to open myself up to more entertainment mediums because of the field I’m entering, so I’m going to keep a checklist per month of books that I read, movies I see, television I watch, games I play, music I listen to, and anything in addition to that such as graphic novels or performances. But you can look for that at the end of the month.
The point of this article in particular is Percy Jackson & The Olympians: The Lightning Thief. I am currently on vacation with my school friends in Florida, and on the car ride down, the two that I happened to be riding with had already read it and were currently reading the rest of the series. Having a good 17 hours of driving ahead of me, I decided to pick it up and give it a shot.
I wasn’t very impressed with it at first. The writing felt juvenile, but I guess it makes sense because it’s clearly meant to be young adult fiction, possibly even children’s fiction. Even still, it felt I was reading a story I had written in tenth grade (which I happened to have re-read recently) and was giving me a sense of underdeveloped plot. Sentences were short, description was scarce, everything was a little too “too the point” and some of the plot points were just out-and-out silly. But the reason I gave it a shot in the first place was because it is so heavily based on Greek mythology. I’ve always been a sucker for Greek mythology, as were my comrades, so I kept reading.
It certainly got more addicting towards the middle. Once the actual quest started, I found it more difficult to put down. The premise of the story is that gods and monsters from Greek days of old existed then and still exist now. Ares, Medusa, the Lotus Eaters, everything from Hades to the Iliad is included here, and what I find interesting is the story’s interpretations of the characters. The gods and monsters have grown and evolved just as mankind has, so Zeus is wearing pinstripe and Medusa owns a statue emporium. But they’re the same gods and heroes as olden days, so seeing how they’ve changed over the past few millennia is interesting and fun to try and guess who their next supernatural encounter is.
If you’re into Greek mythology, give it a shot. If you want just a fun light-hearted story with an interesting take on and old mythos, try it out. There’s enough serious undertones in it so far, I mean remember how dark the first Harry Potter was? Exactly, and look where that story went. The way the stories are written show that the characters will be growing older and maturing as the quest gets darker and more important, so I’m sure it gets more serious throughout the books. The only other thing I can say is that the story does bare mild resemblance to Harry Potter. Confused boy hero, desires parental love, crappy homelife with an awful stepfather, cowardly but loyal male comrade, intelligent but somewhat snooty female comrade, destined jerk rival that loves beating him but hates losing (just wait till my father hears about this). All things aside though, I'm by no means saying this is a copy off of Harry Potter. It's still quite different. Really, if you can get past the mildly juvenile writing style, it’s a good read to try out.
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