by Rick Riordan
This is my favorite of the Percy Jackson books. It's mostly fighting and only minimal amounts of Percy being a dumb teenage boy. I recognize that, when your protagonist is a teenager, there are going to have to be some things that they don't understand, even though they're painfully obvious to the rest of us. This is a large part of the reason that I'm kind of having a hard time with YA right now. I can't stand all of the "Why is that person being nice to me?" "Why can't I stop thinking about so-and-so?" "What if I die a virgin?"
OK, so that last one isn't usually included in YA books (explicitly, but it is a valid concern for most of them). The point is that I spent enough time living in a whiny, confused teenager's head, and I really have no desire to go back.
I think Harry Potter did this well because we weren't actually inside his head. It was told from third person limited, rather than first person, so we got that Harry was confused about girls and stuff without having to hear all of the "But, whyyyyyyyyy?"
Riordan also needs to seriously stop using anything other than he said/she said. There was a time when I thought I would never write that, but here I am: a convert. Everyone's asking and insisting and arguing are so painfully obvious that there really is no need spell it all out for the reader. While I'm on the topic, Riordan's dialogue is pretty weak. Most of the time it feels very forced and stunted, often like he's trying too hard to be funny or poignant or whatever, when he needs to just let the moment be what it is. I realize he's writing for a younger crowd, but still, give them some credit.
OK, now that that's out of the way, I can talk about what I liked about this book. Mostly, the battles. I had so much fun watching New York get torn to shreds - again. That poor city gets so much abuse in our media. The gods are as snarky as ever, and I love them for it. I liked the idea of Demeter as the annoying mother-in-law, but I wish Persephone could say something other than "Mother!" Once is funny. Twice is pushing it. Three is beating the dead horse with a stick. She said it at least four times.
I'm still not sure how I feel about the fulfillment of the prophecy. Obviously, I knew that Percy couldn't die, being the narrator and all, although other YA books have been known to kill off their main characters, so I guess that didn't necessarily mean he was safe. It's just that Riordan spent five books building up to this moment, and in the end it passed without Percy (or the reader) even being aware of it.
I think that part of the anti-climactic feeling comes from the fact that the reader always knew that Percy was going to choose the side of the Olympians, and I'm not sure how I feel about that. On the one hand, it made it easier for the reader to know who to root for, even when the gods weren't at their best. On the other hand, I think it would have been more interesting to watch Percy struggle with that decision more and leave the reader guessing.
Then again, this is YA fiction, and black-and-white good and evil sides are kind of par for the course.
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