The Lightning Thief: Book Review

Since I read this for my summer reading, I remembered that I have to discuss the book, too. So, here’s my book review and recap of Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan. There are spoilers here, so be warned if you plan on reading the series or whatever.

  So, the story starts out with a troubled boy, Percy Jackson. He gets kicked out of (expensive) boarding/private schools on an annual basis, and is blamed a lot for causing trouble because of his ADHD. On a field trip, he gets into a fight with a teacher, who turns into a gargoyle-esque monster. He kills her, but since she’s really a Greek monster, she doesn’t really die, so it’s not as bad as it sounds. Anyway, he gets expelled for that, again, and his teacher, Mr.Brunner(I think?) and his best friend, Grover, are discussing what they’re going to do with him. Percy gets really freaked out, but since he doesn’t know about his Greek heritage, he thinks they’re just talking about private school stuff, like where he’ll go next.

The chapter flies by, and school ends. Grover offers to take Percy home, but Percy is a little creeped out on how weird Grover has been acting around him lately. So naturally, Percy ditches him. Did I mention that at this point of the book, Percy believed that Grover was disabled, so Percy left his 12 year old, disabled friend alone in the middle of New York city. So after Percy justifies his behavior toward Grover, he goes to his Mom’s apartment. She’s a single mother who’s working (Assumingly) minimum wage at a candy store, and she married a really, really bad guy. Like horrible, disgusting, abusive, alcoholic, and gambling. And just to help out everyone, I’ll post some pictures of how the crew looks so far in the movie. I needed mental pictures of everyone to keep up with the story, so I don’t know if you need it to. Well, most of the cast was hired for eye candy, anyway, so it won’t hurt anyone besides those with slow Internet connections if I post some pictures up. :P

So then, the Mom comes home from work, after Percy got into a fight with horrible Stepfather, Gabe Ugliano. A scene you’d expect from a Lifetime movie occurs, and then Mom tells Percy that they’ll go to the beach for the weekend. Percy is thrilled, Gabe isn’t.

On their way there, a storm occurs. Or a monster like their teacher from before attacked them. And a fight scene happened. And Grover came back. I think he found Percy at his apartment, but I forgot. So anyway, the Mom, Sally, goes like ‘I should’ve done this before. Percy, you’re going to camp.’. Percy isn’t thrilled. Camp? Like for ‘special people’? All year long? But Grover tells him they should, and then another fight scene occurs, and Sally gets killed. :( Or does she? But after Percy being sad about his Mom’s loss, he had to take care of Grover, who was injured severely from said monster, and they go to that camp. Percy wakes up after being unconscious.

  He wakes up to see his old teacher, Mr.Brunner, as a Centaur. And on aside note, I don’t remember Mr.Brunner looking that young or happy in the movie, but apparently, Google told me they put him in a beard? So Mr.Brunner was just like a talent scout, except for Demigods, half humans/Greek god children, and his name is really Chiron. And Grover wasn’t disabled, he was a satyr. And there’s a mysterious blonde girl who we’ll learn more about later. So Chiron starts telling Percy all about the camp, Camp Half Blood. I already feel like this is too long, so I’ll spare you the details, but it’s like regular camp, but with a mythological twist. The story isn’t really picking up over here, and I don’t remember the camp parts mostly, so I’ll just talk about the new characters mentioned in this part of the book.

So, mysterious blonde girl’s name is Annabeth. In the movie, she is 26, and a brunette. And it shows. Yeah, they bumped up the cast’s age 4 years, but that ruins the series later on, if they plan on making sequels. She’s really snarky and mean to Percy because he’s a boy, therefore he is stupid and careless. Did I mention she’s the daughter of Athena? Yeah, that’s reaaallly wise. She doesn’t really have that much of a role in this book yet, besides being a girl to increase the gender ratio, and provide a possible romantic interest. She also provides a lot of sexist comments, but she’s a girl, so they ignore them. And she provides a lot of facts about what it’s like being a demigod, which adds a lot of angst to the book. Yeah, it sounds bad, but honestly, 12 years olds at summer camp shouldn’t be so sad!

And I have the random urge to comment on the cast. I have a feeling they casted Brandon as Grover for a token minority. I don’t mean to sound racist, or to imply that Africans can’t be in Greek mythology, but he’s 26. I heard that a sequel will be released in 2012, and then he’ll be 28. If they keep going at that rate, with 5 books in the series, he’ll be in his 30’s by the time the series is over. And if the last book is gonna be divided into two books, then that will be even longer. And yeah, they mentioned how he looks older than the other two, but honestly. Oh, and am I the only one bothered by how the only African American isn’t even fully human? How is that supposed to be politically correct, if they were going for that?

Sally/Catherine’s eyes weren’t that small in the movie, and she didn’t always have that smile on her face. That’s why I have to say about her. And Gabe/Joe? He scared me in the movie. I’ll just leave it at that.

The casting director once again disappointed me with Alexandra Daddario. She was talented in the movie, and she looks great and all, but I don’t think she was the right actress for the movie. One, she’s 24, which makes her too old for possible sequels. Two, they described her as a blonde and a ‘stereotypical Californian girl’. I don’t mean to offend, but wouldn’t that imply she has a tan? I know California has mountains and isn’t just a beach, but they implied that she would have a tan and be blonde, which she is neither. She seemed to say all of her lines robotically, or with an angry tone. She had even less of a purpose than Book!Annabeth. Oh, and on the whole eye candy topic, she looks like my friend’s Stepmom, so that immediately got rid of any potential celebrity crushes. Is Hollywood really in a tanned-blonde-teenage-actress shortage? Oh, and she looks like Danielle Fishel. 

And then there’s Clarisse, a girl who got cut out of the movie. She’s the daughter of Ares, and she’s really aggressive and hates Percy. They blended her into Annabeth, as mentioned above. She doesn’t really serve much purpose in this book either, but she served as a minor antagonist, so that counts for something.

Oh, yeah, I forgot about Luke. He’s the son of Hermes and is a camp veteran. He’s 19, and acted as a brother to Percy. He’s really nice. Well, was. See, he backstabbed everyone at the end and started the major plot of the series. Annabeth had a crush on him, despite them treating each other like siblings. And in the movie, they casted Jake Abel as him. He didn’t really add anything special or memorable for line delivering, so I still believe the casting director added all these model class actors based on looks, not talent. Of course, it’s a tween/teen fantasy series, so what can we expect? And remember how I said Annabeth treated Luke like an older brother AND a crush? Jake is only 22, and he wasn’t significantly taller than Alexandra(Which would’ve at least give us an allusion that he was older), so that killed another subplot. Thanks a lot, shallow casting director.

So eventually, time flies, and Percy is revealed to be the son of Poseidon, the Greek god of Water. And there’s a fight going on at Olympus, with Zeus claiming someone stole his Lightning Bolt, and blaming Poseidon. Percy feels angst-ish that his Dad only ‘claimed’ him so he can use him, but later feels like going on the quest to get the Bolt and stop the war.  Being the book’s natural sidekicks, Grover and Annabeth tag along, as well. They make a couple of pit stops on their way to LA(Did I mention they’re in NY? Oops. ^^;), which if I mentioned them all, would take up a lot more space. So, some of the highlights included…

• The trio going to Medusa’s Gnome Emporium/Warehouse/Whatever accidentally.
• The trio visiting the St.Louis Arch, and Annabeth talking about architecture.
• The trio meeting up with Ares at a diner, and going to do a mini-quest for him at an (abandoned) amusement park. 
• The trio going to a resort.
• The trio going to the Underworld.
• The trio going to fight Ares after they find out what really happened.
• The trio going back to NY, giving the Lightning Bolt to Zeus, and Percy meeting his father.

Then, they go back to camp. The rest of the summer flies by(Did I mention that the climax took place on the summer solstice?) and then, Luke tells Percy his real plan. They get into a fight, and then Luke runs away, and Percy tells the others what happened. This starts the ‘main’ plot of the series. Oh, and Percy and friends decide if they should stay at camp or not.

Oh, and most importantly(To me, anyway), Sally is OK, after they get her from the Underworld. And she got revenge on Gabe. I’ll leave it at that. ;D

I really liked how they made the Greek Mythology allusions, and how they revamped a lot of stories. Although this was the second time I read the series, I remember going like ‘:O OMG NO WAY’ and stuff a lot then, so Mr.Riordan is a great author. Although I think the series started getting really good during the third book, I still loved them all. It’s a quick read(Okay, so 377 isn’t that short, but I finished it on vacation. :P), and I never really got too bored while reading it. I thought the movie was okay.

The genre for this book…? I’m not sure. People say fantasy, but it’s not like just a random list of monsters and potions and battles or whatever. There’s a real story going on. I’d like to say it’s like if realistic fiction and fantasy had a kid, and then fantasy got to keep custody of it. :P I remember in 7th grade I had to do a presentation on this book and I lost points because I couldn’t explain the genre. D:

I’d give the book a 4.2 out of 5, because it had to explain the series and a lot of important events and information, so they had to start it off slow. But it makes learning about ancient history and reading fun, so the book redeemed it’s self for me.(Side note, I think I’m forgetting apostrophe rules. D:) There’s also humor and sarcasm in it, which I like. The only real turn off is the battle parts. I’d just read the first paragraph actively, then skim through the rest, and reread the paragraphs that said if someone died or whatever. I don’t like battle scenes because A)I don’t know the terminology, and B) I don’t know how to visualize it.

So, if you like to read and have a lot of spare time on your hands, I’d recommend this series. It’s fun and addictive, even if I spoiled it for everyone. :P