Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Battle of the Labyrinth

Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Battle of the Labyrinth (book 4)
by Rick Riordan
Unabridged audiobook, read  by Jesse Bernstein

For a great synopsis of this story, check out the "The Battle of the Labyrinth" page on wikipedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Battle_of_the_Labyrinth
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You would think that by the fourth book I would be used to the reader. I still haven't gotten used to Mr. Bernstein and his vocal portrayals. I dont' mind the silly voices, I just don't like how he makes so many voices similar, particularly those of main characters. The two main characters have the same voice and when the action heats up and Riordan stops using 'Percy said' or 'Annabeth said' after each quote, it does get confusing. Perhaps if he didn't use any voices I wouldn't be depending on that so much.
This book was the best so far. It was not so much like a stripped down Harry Potter novel. I was also not so familiar with the monsters, which was kind of nice.
Hephaestus and Hera make appearances in this one to help out Percy, though their ends are definitely their own. Poseiden also appears at the end, but he's really their to support Percy and not trick him into doing something.
Thank god Riordan used Rachel Elizabeth Dare, otherwise I would have been really pissed off. I'm not sure why he always refers to her by her full name (okay, not always, but most of the time). She's described as having red hair, and her initials spell 'red'. I have pondering on the significance of this for two books now, and have not arrived at any conclusions. I'm not familiar with any Ancient Greek stories about red-haired people. I suspect that the hair color would have been highly uncommon during that time period, perhaps never seen.
I have thouht about tracking down the ebook version of this book so that I could do a count of how many times Riordan uses the word "mortal" and the term, "ADHD". If you had a dollar for every time Percy mentions that he has ADHD, you could go out for a movie and a nice meal when the book is done.
On balance, with my nitpicking aside, this was a good book. Percy spent a lot more time analyzing his feelings and motivations for action. I guess this might be as telling about me as it is about the books - perhaps I just want something that is more character oriented and less action oriented. Or maybe it just took Riordan four books to find the voice of his main character, or more likely, maybe it just took me four books to get into the groove.
There is only one book left in the series and I know it's shorter than the fourth book. I don't know how I feel about this. There are a lot of issues left to resolve, but they're not particularly complex issues, I guess. There is going to be at least one big, knowck-down, drag-out battle. I suspect that some characters will be killed off, and I also suspect that they will not be mains. The fact that I am actually looking forward to the book is a good thing, though. And this time next week, I'll know whether it was worth it or not.

This series of books has prompted me to step away from YA for a while, maybe even away from genre and do some serious reading. That doesn't meant that I don't enjoy YA, etc. I do. I enjoy these books as well, I just need something that is speaking a little more to my intellect.