I did like this--enough I've already begun and am more than half way through the second book. Why I didn't like this more? Well, this was way, way too reminiscent of a certain other series...
In this book, a young boy finds out he's a half-blood with magical powers. All his life strange things had happened around him. He's been living in an abusive household--but no worries. He's soon at a special school with other children with magical powers and artifacts, such as a cap that makes you invisible. He mostly hangs out with a somewhat klutzy if well-meaning sidekick and a super-smart girl, bossy, but a girl always with a plan... The kids are divided up into Houses, and one of them is filled with snotty little bullies. Oh, and one of the staff really has it in for our hero, whom he calls at one point, sarcastically natch, "our little celebrity."
Harry Potter? No, Percy Jackson, demigod instead of wizard. You see: "Gods are still alive. They kind of follow Western Civilization around, living in the in the strongest countries, so like now they're in the U.S. And sometimes they have kids with mortals. Kids called half-bloods."
However, not unlike Rowling's Harry Potter, this does have a sense of whimsy that I enjoyed--that I've missed with the end of Harry Potter, with that sense of a magical world alongside our own. Olympus is on the 600th floor of the Empire State Building. There's a Lotus Casino in Las Vegas, the Underworld is in Los Angeles, and as you'll find out in the next book, there's a reason for the disappearances in the Bermuda Triangle... And I admit, as someone who has always loved Greek mythology, I really enjoyed the game of spot-the-mythological creature. My friend the classicist really loves this series--she says it has the "Latin teacher seal of approval" and promised me it becomes more its own series as you go along. So far I'm enjoying the second book more than the first. I doubt this is going to match the Harry Potter books, which I thought had more depth in its world and characters--never mind the originality its clone lacks. But this does have its charms. It's entertaining light reading--and much, much better than the lackluster film made of it.
