Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief - Rick Riordan (2005)

3 stars

I bought this book because I had heard so much about this series and when I told a friend that I thought the movie was kind of average she told me that the book series is so much better and I'm pretty glad I listened to her.

I think I would've enjoyed this book a lot more if I'd read it when I was younger, although I still thought it was good, it was written for a younger age group and it's really noticeable if you're 18 the first time you read it. I think that the premise of the story is really cool, a camp for demigods, of course you'd want to go to that. My favourite character was probably Chiron, I think I could really like Annabeth but the quest took up so much of the book there wasn't much room for character development or exploration asides from Percy. Chiron was just a cool dude who I thought was really needed as a guide for Percy and a bridge between the gods and demigods. I would recommend this book to anyone who likes adventure novels, greek mythology, and is either a teenager or doesn't mind reading a book aimed at 12-14 year olds.

Percy is a kid with ADHD and dyslexia who returns from his boarding school to a holiday with his mother. However when his friend Grover interrupts them talking about how the kindly ones are after him, his mother gets him in the car and drives him to camp half blood. Once there he learns he is a demigod, a son of Poseidon and he must undertake a quest to find Zeus' lightning bolt that was stolen from him. He travels to Los Angeles with Annabeth and Grover to go talk to Hades, who they assume has the bolt, into giving it back to them but once in the underworld Percy learns that he had been set up and he had the bolt in his bag that Ares had given to him. He manages to escape the underworld with the bolt and after defeating Ares in battle returns the bolt to Zeus. He is welcomed back to camp as a hero and then after learning that his friend Luke was the one who initially stole the bolt he decides to go home for the rest of the year and return to camp next summer.