#1 The Lightning Thief ★★★★☆
#2 The Sea of Monsters ★★★★☆
#3 The Titan’s Curse ★★★★☆
#4 The Battle of the Labyrinth ★★★★★
#5 The Last Olympian ★★★★★

I know I’ve mentioned this before, but I somehow missed the Rick Riordan train entirely as a kid. I never read any of his books, never saw the Percy film(s), nothing – my first introduction to the world was last summer, when I picked up The Lightning Thief, and I thought it was cute enough, but I wasn’t super impressed, beyond totally loving the representation for dyslexia (which I’ve never seen in any other book) and ADHD (which I have, and never see rep for). This book, however, hooked me for good, and now I want to read every single piece of work that Riordan ever has released (or ever will).

I think it’s her way of saying anything is possible. Percy can pass seventh grade. Waffles can be blue. Little miracles like that.

My favorite thing about the first book was Rick’s sense of humor and the ways it comes across through Percy’s narrative, and that was only further enhanced in this book. While the first one was cute, the second one actually made me laugh a few times – there’s so much more snark and sass, and it definitely feels like a slightly “older” sense of humor, despite Percy only being one year older. Percy’s outlook on the world is comical, a little cynical, and a bit self-deprecating, but never to the point of being a downer.

“You can’t give up on your family, no matter how tempting they make it. It doesn’t matter if they hate you, or embarrass you, or simply don’t appreciate your genius for inventing the internet –”

I also thought the adult side characters were a lot more amusing and interesting in this installment, especially Hermes, who we get to spend a little bit of time with and who I really hope we see more of in the future. I loved his little snake sidekicks, and the fact that he talked to Percy like an equal, instead of being condescending or secretive like a lot of the adults in the first book were.

We only came close to dying six or seven times, which I thought was pretty good.

Of course, as always, there’s a lot of adventure, but I personally didn’t think the action sequences in this book were as harrowing as the first book’s, which was my only complaint – then again, this book was also a bit shorter (it’s the shortest in the series, at less than 300 pages), so there wasn’t as much room to fit in the extra monsters and fights. I still enjoyed the action scenes we did get, and we got to experience more of Percy’s natural ingenuity, as well as the cute “coincidences” in which his gifts from the gods assist him at just the right moments.

“Families are messy. Immortal families are eternally messy. Sometimes the best we can do is to remind each other that we’re related for better or for worse… and try to keep the maiming and killing to a minimum.”

If I had to pick just one favorite aspect of this book, though, I think it would be Tyson, and the family/sibling rep shown there. Tyson is a Cyclops, and as we learn very early on, related to Percy, and we see a lot of this struggle that Percy goes through between determining whether he should worry more about his own reputation, or bonding with his newfound sibling. Tyson is such a precious and sweet character, though, with a lot of his own skills and capabilities to bring to the table, and I loved watching Percy grow close to him and learn to love him despite the reputation that Cyclopes have.

All in all, this book was a total delight to read, and I can’t wait to continue the series!