Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Last Olympian

Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Last Olympian (book 5)
by Rick Riordan
Unabridged audiobook, read  by Jesse Bernstein

The fifth and final book in the Percy Jackson & the Olympians series is the best of the books. Now, perhaps this is because Riordan's writing has gotten better, or because I've grown fond of certain characters, or because I know what to expect, or because the reader did a better job. I'll go with a mix of the first three - Bernstein's performance is exactly on par with the earlier books, no better, no worse.
It's the final summer before Percy turns 16 and the prophecy will be fulfilled and Olympus will fall or stand because of it. Jackson is right in the middle of it and is in fact the one upon which everything depends. Riordan takes a couple of pages from Rowling's playbook in accomplishing this - character's are killed, minor yet key villains redeem themselves and our hero stands toe to toe with the baddy and has the realization that the only way to win is to give up his tight control of the situation and depend on those he cares about most.
All the major characters make it through this one and come out the other side a better person / demigod / satyr / cyclops. Jackson gets the girl - Annabeth, not Rachael - as it should be, or at least as is expected. Jackson gets the admiration of all and the respect of many who disdained him earlier.
I feel like I could really rip this book apart, but I'm not going to. I enjoyed it. Not everything is a work of enduring literature, and that's not a bad thing. This book, like the rest in the series is well-based in Greek mythology and is a great jumping off point for a young person just getting into studying the classics or for a middle-aged man who is already familiar and wants to play in a field that he already is familiar with.
The book ends with the new oracle (hay - we knew Rachael Elizabeth Dare was going to be important) pronouncing the next big prophecy, but other than that everything is wrapped up. There is nothing left dangling. I do know that there is another set of books that take place in the same universe, and Jackson has cameos, but you don't need to read them if you don't want to. I think after I give genre reading a break, I'll find that I'm ready to take on some YA again, and I'll probably give them a look. I am willing to give Riordan's Egyptian-based series a shot, too. I just hope that there is a different reader for these other books. Maybe there just needs to be a new director - it's not that Bernstein's voice is annoying, it's doing "voices" for characters that I find annoying. Either go all in and develop a bunch of distinctly different voices, or don't do voices. But, I'm beginning to get off topic...
One thing that I can say about these books is that they are written very cinematically. I don't know if they are making sequels to that first movie, but if they do, I'll probably watch them.

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.

Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Titan's Curse

Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Titan's Curse (book 3)
by Rick Riordan
Unabridged audiobook, read  by Jesse Bernstein

Book 3 of the Percy Jackson & the Olympians series breaks with the pattern set by the first two by starting just prior to Winter break instead of right before Summer break. Grover has sent a message to Camp Half-Blood that he needs help. Always eager for an adventure and to help his buddy out, Percy along with Thalia and Annabeth head to upstate Maine to find out how they can help the satyr.
They arrive at the military school where Grover is undercover, only to meet the monster-in-disguise right off the bat. In this case, the assistant Principal is really the manticore and explains that he was a Greek monster before he was banished the lands and the tales of the Middle East.
Annabeth is captured by the manticore, and Thalia, Grover and several of the Hunters (of Artemis) join together to quest for her, notably the leiutenant to Artemis, Zoe and one of the two kids that Grover had brought Percy to help him in the first place. Percy uses Annabeth's baseball cap of invisibility to tag along until he is discovered, when he openly joins the quest.
Artemis, Apollo and Athena help the kids on their journey across the US to San Francisco, which is set up as both the anti-Manhattan and the anti-Olympus. Some interesting things happen throughout this tale, like two of the main characters getting killed off (at least I won't spoil it by saying who), but one of them in such an indecisive way as to make me think that she may make a comeback. We also learn that Hades has two children, but that he didn't break the moratorium on the big three having kids because they have been stuck in the Lotus Eater's Hotel since prior to World War II when the ban on kids for Zeus, Poseiden and Hades went into effect.
The story ends with Annabeth deciding to move to San Francisco to give living with her dad and his family another chance.
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This book has the least resemblance to a Harry Potter book yet. This is neither good or bad, just an observation. It was nice, though, to see a different type of story evoked.
Let's see, which of the gods have helped Percy now? Poseiden, Hermes, Apollo, Artemis, Athena and Aphrodite. Ares kind of helped, kind of set Percy up, so I'm not going to count him in the "helpers" list. Who are the haters? Zeus, Ares, Hephaestus and Hades, and kind of Athena, but it's not really personal, so she shouldn't be on the list of "haters" I guess.
I know that Riordan is writing the Kane cycle now which is set among the Egyptian gods, but might the statements of the manticore be more than explanation? Might they be a hint of another story cycle to come sometime later?
Speaking of new series by Riordan, I also just learned that there is another series with the Greek gods, called the Lost Heroes or something which not only features some characters from the Percy Jackson series but also uses the Roman pantheon. How the hell does that work? Is there a Zeus and a Jupiter? Or do we discover that sometimes Percy's dad likes to slum it and go around playing Neptune?
Going into this book, I knew that the title had to refer to one of two titan's and predicted I would know within the first chapter and that it would not actually be revealed to the reader until much later in the book. As soon as we learn that Luke has aligned himself with the General of the titans, to help restore Chronos, we know that the villain is Atlas. The other option was Prometheus, who may not want the gods to be in power, but he wouldn't want to replace them with the titans.
There is a muggle, I mean a mortal in this book, that I know we are going to meet again, and if we don't, I will write an email to Riordan detailing my displeasure. The red-headed girl whom Percy meets at Hoover Dam can see through the mist. And then Riordan uses her full name in three other sections of the book when Percy is reflecting on the dam situation. If this is not foreshadowing, I am very disappointed, either at the failure to include her later, or at the editor's failure to allow her full name to be used so much in the book.

Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Sea of Monsters

Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Sea of Monsters (book 2)
by Rick Riordan
Unabridged audiobook, read  by Jesse Bernstein

The story opens as Percy Jackson wakes from a horrible nightmare about his friend Grover. His mom calls him to breakfast, where all the food is colored blue in honor of it being the last day of school. Not only is it the last day, but Percy has stayed out of trouble all year and it looks like this will be the first time in seven years that he has not been kicked out of his school.
Percy hurries off to meet his friend, Tyson whom he rides to school with on the subway. Percy is distracted by his dream as he tells his mom goodbye, that and he keeps thinking that he is seeing something out of the corner of his eye, but when he looks there is nothing there.
Tyson is a large, homeless kid who's only friend is Percy. Tyson gets picked on by the other kids, which often causes him to cry even though he is much larger and stronger than them.
This last day of school sees a group of kids visiting from another school - but they're not kids at all, they're disguised giant cannibals who try to kill Percy in the deadliest game of dodge ball ever played. Fortunately, Annabeth shows up (she had been the shadow that Percy kept noticing) and Tyson is more than just a kid. Unfortunately, the deadly dodge ball game destroys the gymnasium and starts the school on fire.
The three kids escape and do the only thing they can do - go to the Half-blood camp. But, when they arrive, Clorice is leading a group of other campers in an attempt to defend the camp from two giant mechanical bulls.
Chiron has been fired from his position because Thalia's pine tree was poisoned, and he has been replaced by a man named Tantelus who takes an immediate dislike to Percy.
Percy, with help from Hermes, decides to go find and rescue Grover, and while he's at it, retrieve the Golden Fleece which is likely the only thing that can stop Thalia's pine from dying. He has been forbidden a quest of this undertaking, that had been given to Clorice, so Percy, along with Annabeth and Tyson sneak out of camp and catch a ride south towards where Grover is being held. It is just their bad luck that the ship they stowaway on, is being captained by Luke, the son of Hermes that stole the items in the first book, and tried to kill Percy a time or two.
Percy and Annabeth withstand many trials and tribulations to finally end up on the island Grover is being held on, only to be reunited with Tyson who had been missing for the last while, and to find that Clorice is already there and being held captive, too.
The group defeats the evil cyclops, Polythemus and escapes to Miami, only to be attacked by Luke and his cronies. All seems lost until Chrion shows up with a group of other Centaurs and helps drive Luke and his group away.
By the end of the story everything is as it should be, except that the Golden Fleece did a little bit too good of a job on healing Thalia's pine and has actually healed her and separated her out from the tree.
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This was a short and sweet Harry Potter derivative. I had already mentioned when writing about the Lightning Thief how similar the two series are. Well, listening to the second book did nothing to change that view. Maybe derivative is too strong of a term, it's more like using the same formula, but with a smaller budget. The best analogy I can think of is actually literary (huzzah for me). Percy Jackson is to Harry Potter as the Belgariad / Malloreon is to Lord of the Rings. It uses a similar structure to tell a similar story. We see this kind of thing in media all the time. CSI comes along and is a huge success, and suddenly there are all kinds of forensics procedural shows. Some producer, actually several producers, crack the formula and set off to cash in. I'm going to be more generous to Mr. Riordan, though, I think he used the Potter books to fire off his own ideas. I mean, sure, the dude wants to sell books, but I think he's just try to write an entertaining story. And in much the same way that I watch almost all the forensics procedurals, there is room in my life for Harry Potter and Percy Jackson. The Jackson stories just aren't as deep or as broad as the Potter stories. But, that doesn't mean that they're not entertaining.
I had some issues with Mr. Bernstein's reading of the book. The first issue isn't his fault at all, but is something the producer or engineer should have caught, and that is the 'tinny' sound that occurs in several places. I might be Library2Go's fault - that's where I downloaded the files from. The other two issues are definitely Mr. Bernstein's, though his director should have caught it. Bernstein uses the same voice for Percy and Annabeth. Now I don't think that he should have used a falsetto voice, but he might have thrown in a bit of a Southern twang (Annabeth is from Virginia), really anything to help differentiate between the two as they have many conversations together. Particularly towards the end of the book as the action picks up and Riordan drops 'he said' and 'she said'. There were spots that I had to listen to a second time to figure out who was saying what. The other issue is the surfer dude talk. It's bad enough that Luke talks like a surfer dude, but, I'll allow it annoying as it is. But at the end of the book when Chiron brings the centaurs to the kids aid, all of the centaurs taht are not Chiron talk like surfer dudes. Annoying. You wouldn't catch Jim Dale doing a surfer dude, let alone the same surfer dude for a whole gaggle of characters.

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.