Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning ThiefC

Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief (book 1)
by Rick Riordan
Unabridged audiobook, read  by Jesse Bernstein

12 year old Percy Jackson is afflicted with both ADHD and dyslexia - both things that make him hard to focus in school and easy to get in trouble. This is proved by the fact that Jackson has been in six different schools in six years, managing to get kicked out of all that he has been enrolled in thus far. He has high hopes for this year, though. He has a best friend, Grover, who is handicapped and forced to walk with crutches. He also has a teacher, interestingly enough who is wheel chair bound, who believes in him and is always pressing Jackson to do better.
Grover is always getting picked on by the school bully, and every time Jackson does get in trouble it is due to him sticking up for his friend. It all comes to a head while the class is on a field trip to a museum in New York City. In protecting Grover from the obnoxious red-haired girl, Jackson somehow causes her to go soaked by the fountain they are in front of, which everyone will assume is because he pushed her into the fountain, but he saw the water rise up and pull her in.
He is taken inside by a teacher that hates him, to receive his punishment, but to his surprise, she is really some type of hideous monster who would have killed him if not for the intervention of Chiron. This is when he discovers that the teacher he likes is more than he appears to be as well, but not in a way that Jackson can pin down at this point.
Jackson manages to finish out the school year, and on his way home for the summer, ditches Grover at the train station (he had promised to do something with him) and goes home to be met by his horrific step-father. After much squabbling, Jackson and his mother leave, only to be pursued by a minotaur, which actually turns out to be the minotaur from Greek mythology. The beast kills Jackson's mother and drives him away, fleeing into what is the one place where he'll be safe - the camp for 'half-bloods', the children of the Gods of Ancient Greek times.
Jackson discovers that his buddy Grover is really a satyr, and that his favorite teacher is here as well, and his wheel chair is actually a magical contraption to hide that he is the legendary centaur, Chiron. He also meets a girl his age, Annabeth, whom he learns is the daughter of Athena.
Almost immediately, Jackson tangles with the camp bully, a daughter of Ares, who along with her siblings try to give him a swirly in the girl's bathroom. But somehow, the water in the pipes comes shooting out, drenching everyone, foe and friend alike, except for Jackson who is completely dry. Soon enough, the Ares kids are taking their revenge on Jackson during a game of capture the flag, at which time he is forced back into a stream and somehow the water comes to his aid again, this time there is also a rush of strength and adrenaline. After the game is over and a hell hound defeated, a blue and green trident appears over Jackson's head and he is declared a son of Poseiden.
Jackson's lineage is a matter of no small importance as there is a pact between Zeus, Poseiden and Hades not to father any offspring, coupled with the fact that someone has stolen Zeus' thunderbolt, and matters in the Greek Gods' world are very tense and even more dangerous then usual.
So, to rectify matter, Jackson is given a quest to find the thunderbolt and return it within the next ten days to avoid a great amongst the Gods.
Jackson set out immediately, with Annabeth, the wiser, more experienced friend, and Grover the loyal if somewhat inept friend who always manages to come through when he absolutely has to. They travel across the U.S. fighting monsters along the way and even encountering Ares himself.
Thinking that Hades has stolen the thunderbolt, due in large part ot Ares, the trio descend to the Underworld and confront Hades himself. But they discover that Hades has also had his mask of invisibility stolen, and it happened the same time that Zeus' thunderbolt was stolen. Jackson has to admit to his friends that he ulterior motives for coming to the Underworld - he wished to bring his mother back, who wasn't dead after all, but was taken away by Hades just before she was killed, so he could hold her for ransom to get his mask back. Jackson surprises them all when he leaves his mother behind to continue on with his two friends.
Jackson ends up in a showdown, grudge match with Ares himself, and discovers that Ares had the two items stolen so he could insight a war between the 'big three'. Jackson somehow defeats the God of War in single combat, and is able in a nick of time to return the stolen items, and in the process meet his father for the first time. Zeus and Hades are glad to have their items back, and show this in very different ways - Zeus allows Jackson to leave with his life, while Hades actually frees Jackson's mother and returns her to New York.
Finally, Jackson discovers that the thief was one of the kids at the camp, a camp counselor actually, named Luke, who is a son of Hermes. Luke tries to kill Jackson and leaves him with information that Jackson had suspected, that the real mastermind behind this had not been Ares, but had been Chronos, whom Luke now serves.
The story wraps up with Luke going to stay with his mother instead of staying year round at the camp. His mom has recently gotten rid of her no good husband and has a new place in the City where she has secured Jackson a spot at school number seven.
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If my description reminds you of a certain boy wizard I'm not surprised. It's almost straight across for the main characters - Percy would be Harry, Annabeth is Hermione, Grover is Ron, Chiron is Dumbledore, and the step dad was Harry's muggle family all rolled together in one. Percy, like Harry had trouble in normal schools, and like Harry knew nothing of who he really was before it was thrust upon him. There is also a prophecy and just like Harry, there are some things of his new found life that Percy is very good at from the beginning. Oh, and of course the children of Ares are for all intents and purposes the Slytherin House.
There are differences of course. The main one being that Percy's mother is still alive, and so is his father, though Percy doesn't much interact with him. And of course, Percy goes to a special summer camp, but regular school, while Harry went to a special school, but was in the muggle world for summers. OK, maybe this is not that big of a difference.
The real difference comes in two ways: the style of writing and the way things are resolved. Stylistically, this book is quite different from the Harry Potter books as we here from the very beginning Percy's thoughts on everything, where we largely get a third person view in the Potter books. This is both a good and a bad thing, mostly good. We get to hear all of Percy's desires as he sees them, and we get to know his weaknesses and strengths in the same manner. A drawback is that at times, Riordan is not writing the reactions of a 12 year old boy. There are times when the thoughts and actions of Percy are of a mature adult - not that 12 year old boys cannot act in a mature or adult fashion, they can, it's just that the particular things / situations are things that most adults couldn't handle in a mature fashion. Perhaps I'm being too critical here, perhaps being a kid today readies one for learning he is a demigod and that Gods and monsters are real. It's also very telling what Riordan doesn't have Percy thinking about. But, that is as much a critique of the genre as this book - YA does not deal with the mundande things that people think about, like what to eat or who to talk to or where the bathroom is or if young people are sexually aware. How old is Harry before he finally kisses Cho?
The reader, Jesse Bernstein, does a good job. He bothered me at the beginning, but I think that was mostly about the way the book was written. Once I got the hang of it, he stopped annoying me. I do wish that he had tried to speak with a different voice for the various characters - I don't mean in a different voice, I mean using his voice to convey the fact that Annabeth is going to speak in a different style than Percy, and Chiron will certainly speak differently.
I watched the movie first. I was told that the film brings in a lot of things from the second and subsequent books, but if it did, I don't know how or what. The main difference is that in the film, Percy is several years older. If each of the remaining four books is one year of Percy's life, instead of finishing around the time he would finishe high school, the films will have Percy in college or working at a job. I guess I'll have to wait and see.
I didn't love this book, I must confess. But, I did like it. I will give the second book a chance. Unlike the Potter books where I couldn't wait to read the next, I feel like this story nicely wrapped up most issues in a way that didn't leave me wondering, though of course there is still a great evil on the horizon, and I presume that Percy is the kid who holds the key to it all. We'll see.