I enjoyed Rick Riordan's first book, The Lightning Thief. I didn't care for The Sea of Monsters, the second book in Riordan's Percy Jackson series, quite so much. It wasn't that the book wasn't well done or wasn't as good. It was more that I enjoyed the uniqueness of the set-up in The Lightning Thief and in The Sea of Monsters it wasn't unique to me anymore.
However, I'd heard good things about The Titan's Curse so I gave it a try. I think it's back at the level of the first book of the series. Though, to be truthful, The Sea of Monsters involves a quest on water, and I just might prefer quests on land, which is what you have in the first and third books.
One of the things I particularly enjoy about the Percy Jackson books is Riordan's treatment of the Greek gods. While he takes the premise for the world he's created seriously (the Greek gods still exist in the present day), he doesn't take the gods themselves too seriously. He twists their traditional characteristics and turns many of them into contemporary parodies. Thus Apollo, the god of poetry (among other things), writes haiku that no one wants to hear.
I can't recall how the first two books ended, but Titan's Curse ends with a cliffhanger, meaning the series is now a serial.
I'm going to be hearing Rick Riordan speak at the Rabbit Hill Festival of Literature later this month. And the title of the fourth Percy Jackson book will be announced this Thursday.
2 comments:
I have an eleventh grader (well, possibly a tenth grader, but I'm pretty sure he's a junior now) who stopped me tonight to tell me the fourth book was due out in May and that I'd be able to read the first chapter on Thursday. Mind you, he didn't even tell me what "fourth book" he was talking about. He just knew I'd know, because he's been so excited about this series. And this is from a kid who, as far as I can tell, reads manga and not much else. Go, Rick Riordan!
That's marvelous. The website says there's going to be a "sneak peak" tomorrow, but Riordan says at his blog that the fourth book is being kept very secret. There will be no arcs and booksellers are going to be expected to wait for the official publication date. Evidently the series is becoming popular enough that they have to worry about spoilers.
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