Twelve-year-old Percy Jackson is about to be kicked out of boarding school . . . again. No matter how hard he tries, he can't seem to stay out of trouble. But can he really be expected to stand by and watch while a bully picks on his scrawny best friend? Or not defend himself against his pre-algebra teacher when she turns into a monster and tries to kill him? Of course, no one believes Percy about the monster incident; he's not even sure he believes himself.
Until the Minotaur chases him to summer camp.
Suddenly, mythical creatures seem to be walking straight out of the pages of Percy's Greek mythology textbook and into his life. The gods of Mount Olympus, he's coming to realize, are very much alive in the twenty-first century. And worse, he's angered a few of them: Zeus's master lightning bolt has been stolen, and Percy is the prime suspect.
Now Percy has just ten days to find and return Zeus's stolen property, and bring peace to a warring Mount Olympus. On a daring road trip from their summer camp in New York to the gates of the Underworld in Los Angeles, Percy and his friends–one a satyr and the other the demigod daughter of Athena–will face a host of enemies determined to stop them. To succeed on his quest, Percy will have to do more than catch the true thief: he must come to terms with the father who abandoned him; solve the riddle of the Oracle, which warns him of failure and betrayal by a friend; and unravel a treachery more powerful than the gods themselves.
I wasn't sure if I was going to review this one being that it is technically 10 years old (the copyright date is for 2005 although the listed publication date on Goodreads is 2006) but then I decided I had to. Why? Because there has to be someone out there, like me, who hasn't read this book yet. And that, my friends, is a travesty.
I admit I'm late to the Percy Jackson game. I saw the trailers for the Lightning Thief movie and I was mildly interested but didn't pay much attention because at the time I wasn't reading (the dreaded reading slump) and because I actually didn't know it was based on a book at that time. I learned that later, but still didn't watch the movie or read the book.
But as I was perusing the library shelves at my college, The Lightning Thief was sitting there in all it's glory and I decided I might as well see what the fuss was about. I saw - so much so that I actually finished the book (devoured it) the same day I checked it out, which was actually yesterday (Oct. 12, 2015).
I'm a Greek Mythology nut. I absolutely love it. Yet I found characters from the Greek myths that I hadn't heard of before in this book. Which is a good thing because it wasn't boring to me when the Greek myth characters were in the mix. I loved how the gods were portrayed - especially Artemis, who is included even though she's chosen to remain a maiden and therefore wouldn't have children. At first Ares was a bit of a shock but then I could see where a biker would be a good fit for him. And I'm still laughing about the fact that Poseidon looks like a beach bum/tourist when Percy meets him.
I won't tell you, if you don't know, who Percy's father is, but I will say it didn't take me long to figure it out. But then again, that's not a bad thing. It's actually quite helpful.
It's hard not to give away the entire story - you just have to read the book for yourself if you haven't already. Trust me, this book is amazing.
