The Lightning Thief
Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief is one of those book that started off as an excellent idea and to my surprise, delivered in a great story as well. Not a lot of books can manage that. This is one of those book that once you pick it up you are not gonna put it down. I finished the book in one weekend and can’t wait to start the next book in the series!
The book is about a world where the Greek gods are real and still active in the modern world. They, however, still behave like old times, jealous, backstabbing, arguing, and of course, being promiscuous and sexing human everywhere. And the result, just like in the old days, are half human half gods (they were called heroes in the old days) running around the earth. The story centered on Percy Jackson, son of Poseidon, how he discovered the truth about himself, how he was attacked over and over again by monsters and eventually get to the summer camp for all the half-bloods. From there on he went on a quest to prevent a war between gods because Zeus’ Lightning Bolt was stolen.
The fact that you have a story with some familiar names that reader surely heard of is already a major plus, let alone these gods are as dramatic humans. The fun of the story is to recognize which god or monster or legend that makes an appearance in their modern world disguise. The adventure is definitely thrilling because these gods are so unpredictable, none of them are benevolent as we all know about the myths. You can’t trust any of them and the sense of danger is everywhere. It’s one of those book that you can’t put it down.
A funny thing I noticed about the book is that the main events goes down during the summer vacation and from what I heard it is the same as the rest of the book series. In comparsion in Harry Potter, events happened mostly through out the school years, while the summer is relatively clam.
My only complaint about the book is its world view of how they linked the Greek gods with western civilization. I guess being Asian, I just found the omission of the eastern world is troubling. Granted it would be difficult to work it in the story, just like it’s impossible to find a place for the GOD with capital G in a story based on myths that predated Christianity. But the gods and myths of the eastern civilization is different because not only they are as old as the Greek, they are also completely separated from the rest of the ancient civilizations that surrounds the Mediterranean Sea. It would be interesting to see how gods of different worlds interact, but that’s probably a story that is waiting for someone else to tell.
The book is being made into a movie for next year. With big name like Uma Thurman, Pierce Brosnan, Sean Bean, and Rosario Dawson attached. It will be directed by Chris Columbus, the same director who did the first two Harry Potter movies. It’s admirable that he seems like the director that always do a faithful job translating materials on the screen, but sometimes, he’s too faithful (think Rent the movie) it becomes dull. Hopefully he finds a better balance this time around.
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