Fifth Draft

“Annabeth and I were more than just two people. We were a pair, and when we stood at the crossroads, we did it together.”

I’ve been reading Percy Jackson books for going on 15 years now. I’ve never done a massive deep dive on the character or his adventures, but I think it’s still nice to find I can not only be entertained by the adventures of the demigod, but also learn something about the character I hadn’t realized before.

Percy is trying to get into New Rome University, a college on the west coast primarily for those demigods whose parents are of Roman origin. Meaning to get in, he needs three recommendation letters from gods/goddesses saying he’s the right candidate. The first book in the series, Chalice of the Gods, featured Percy and crew trying to get a, you guess it, chalice back for the gods. Chaos and fun times ensued.

What I noted there was it was nice to be reading Riordan’s words in Percy’s voice again. Something very naturally, fitting, as it was the first of the many, many, many demigods he would go on to write. The snark, the self-deprecation, and the ability to find the hope in even the most dire of circumstances, is best reflected in Percy’s story. I always found it less so in the others, but still enjoyed a good deal of those books all the same.

The less we talk about Apollo, however…

Wrath of the Triple Goddess plays out like his others, in the sense that he knows when to let the characters speak and when to ramp up the action. I made the mistake early on in his books at getting annoyed when not enough sword and magic encounters were happening. But I see the beauty of having 9/10 of the book be talking, and then the final confrontation be epic mythical fights. It’s very Bendis, in that he let his stories build up for five or six issues then have a big payoff in the final comic. Knowing what’s coming, how they’re structured, can make it very easy to read these out loud to a class of 10 year olds.

The final battle of this book is big, but maybe too big. A lot of returning characters who I didn’t recognize right away. It really let me know how disconnected I am from this world, a world I was routinely in thanks to my yearly reading of the first book, The Lightning Thief, to my 5th grade classes. I would have known all the names and places but I found myself a little disjointed.

Kind of like this review. I don’t want this to go 2,000+ words (even though it totally could) so I’ll just leave you with these random bits and hope they make a solid mindscape of what I felt about this story.

Riordan at his best. Hoping Percy and Annabeth get the finale, and ending, they deserve. But I don’t want it stop.

Thanks for reading,

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