The Sea of Monsters (Percy Jackson and the Olympians, Book 2)

I gave this one two stars instead of one star because it actually gripped me, as a story, much better than its predecessor. Was this book, as a whole, much better? Not really.

Percy Jackson is the son of Poseidon -- and a mortal. So he's a demi-god, or "half-blood" if you can't figure out vocabulary. And he is one strange kid. But let's get to that later. The camp Percy attends for children like himself is in trouble. Someone has poisoned the tree which guards its boundaries (three guesses who) and bad things are happening. The only thing that can save it is the Golden Fleece. Throw in a cyclops half-brother and some really skewed mythology and you've got the plot right there.

Unfortunately, in many ways this book was just The Odyssey except not as good. SPOILERS. Seriously. We run into Circe, the Sirens, Polyphemus the annoyed cyclops, there's the thermos full of the four winds (except Hermes has them instead of the WIND GOD, Aeolus), there's Scylla and Charbdis, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. The only thing we're missing is a trip to the Underworld, but golly gee, we got that in the last book. So it's kind of really confusing that we're superimposing the story of Odysseus onto the story of the Golden Fleece. It's not even like Percy got some tips on how to do things a bit better, this time around. He basically does EXACTLY what Odysseus does. I wish I'd just gone back and reread the Odyssey. It was a better story.

So the plot is super contrived. There's no real danger, "deus ex machina" is just how they end every single chapter, and I can't even bring myself to care about the big ol' prophecy that is clearly setting up the giant climax which will be the last book. (Side tangent -- the plot structure is very similar to Harry Potter in that there's a climax, a wise, older mentor kind of explains for the audience what's been going on, and then there's some kind of conclusion. The only problem is, Chiron has no real meaningful insights, he's hardly eloquent, and he doesn't really share any information with Percy. If only we were privy to his conversations with Annabeth, I think we'd have a better understanding of what's going on. Side tangent done.) But the biggest weakness of this series is Percy.

Percy is a really weird kid. He's a dunce and a genius all at the same time. He's horrible with climbing, but put a sword in his hand and he's the best fighter anyone or their mother has ever seen. He can think up a scheme to expose his arch-enemy for the jerk everyone knows he is but is pretending not to really know about because they care too much about the status quo but forgets to disarm his best friend so that she can get loose when she's supposed to be tied up, safe from the Sirens' tempting song. Percy's not that interesting, either. He's very bland. He is a foil for the other characters: he lets Annabeth's genius shine, he lets Grover's silliness come to the front, he lets Tyson take them all by surprise. . .by basically being an empty shell. He's very ho-hum. Yet, at the same time, he's terribly mean-hearted. When he discovers that the giant, bumbling baby he's been treating with barely masked revulsion and allowing him to tag along is his half-brother, it takes him the whole book to come to a place where he can just say out loud, "he's my brother". He still can't really say anything nice about the kid. The whole thing felt really horrible and I just wanted to cry for poor Tyson at every turn. His story is the real tragedy.

Lastly, Riordan's writing. It's really a shame that the voice of Percy is so lame. He's the one telling the story, but he's weirdly caught up in what I suppose Riordan thinks of as witty turns of phrase and dumbed-down slang. It is very much like talking to a thirteen-year-old boy, but one who thinks he has come up with the most creative metaphors since Shakespeare. Instead, they just make me want to gag. They're not charming, they're revolting. It spoils the mood. There can be no wisp of seriousness when Riordan says things like "I was almost a Percy pizza with extra olives". Yeah, I can really tell you were frightened for your life. And finally, this absolute gem not caught by editors: "I'd just assume keep [the empathy link]". This is something a ten-year-old would say because they've heard the phrase incorrectly, don't know how to spell, and mix everything up. Since Riordan has several children of his own about that age, I'd like to think he would know it's "just as soon". But apparently he doesn't.

Yes, I'm going to read the next one. Why? I really don't know. I think it's because at this point I just have to see it all the way through. Like with the Twilight books. Yes, I wanted to rip my own face off rather than keep reading the last one, but I just need to finish them all. Do I hope it'll be better than the next one? Oh please. Do I realistically think it will be? Nope. Am I just punishing myself? Probably. Oh well. On to the next.

I really enjoyed Percy’s internal battle of peer acceptance vs kindness to Tyson. And Clarisse’s internal battle to save her home vs impress her dad. And the history mixed with mythology rules was also really cool.

Clarisse sucks.
Percy is a little bit dumb sometimes.
The end was 'dun dun dun' ending.
Good stuff.

Way better then the movie.
ha

Amazing second book, there is a bit of character development which is really cool to watch! I also loved some the new characters introduced!

This is a book I would absolutely recommend to anyone who enjoyed the first book of the Percy Jackson series. There were a lot of surprises that changed my perspective I had on the characters. Other than that, the book was excellent.