I've just finished reading The Kane Chronicles, to mixed reaction, and I stumbled across this spin-off novelette, and honestly I liked it much more unreservedly than I did the Chronicles. Carter Kane meets up with Percy Jackson to fight a giant crocodile, and they are clearly both extremely wary of the new magic system the other represents (new to them, anyway). This is the kind of thing I find really interesting: the politics of gods and magic, and how these two competing, secret understandings navigate knowledge of each other. Warily, is the answer, and I genuinely enjoyed the suspicion between the two boys. It's justified on both sides, and it doesn't stop them working together and even, I think, wanting to like each other.

The biggest advantage here, though, is the length. Because it's a novelette, there's no room for Riordan to drag everything out and overwhelm the narrative with extra stuff, which was one of my biggest issues with Chronicles. This is short and punchy and focused, and all the better for it.