Percy Jackson –A Book Rave and Movie Rant

The entire Percy Jackson series by Rick Riordan was simply wonderful! Any fan of the Harry Potter series will fall in love with Percy Jackson and his oddball friends. These books will have even the most reluctant readers begging for more.

Percy Jackson has gotten kicked out of every school he has ever gone to. It’s not his fault…things just seem to happen around him. Things he has no explanation for and no control over. Add to it the fact that he is ADHD and dyslexic, school just flat out sucks for Percy.

Then, on his sixth grade school field trip, something insane happens…his pre-algebra teacher turns into a Fury and tries to kill him! He only survives because Mr. Brunner, his wheelchair-bound teacher, throws him a ball point pen that somehow turns into a sword when he uncaps it. The even stranger part…no one acknowledges that this near-death-event even happened. Even his best friend Grover, a kid with a handicap limp, says that Percy just imagined it.

While on vacation at a seaside cabin with his mom, shit gets real. Percy’s mom orders him to the car, where they embark upon a high-speed journey to a destination unbeknownst to Percy.  Somehow Grover ends up in the car with them and Percy discovers the startling truth: He is a demigod, birthed from one mortal parent and one Greek God, straight out of ancient Greek mythology. Also, it turns out that his best friend Grover is really a satyr—human from the waist up (if you ignore the small horns growing out of his curly hair) and goat from the waist down (this explains his “handicap” limp—all those years of stuffing goat hooves into tennis shoes).

The destination is Camp Half-Blood: A summer camp where a magical boarder keeps half-bloods safe from mythological monsters. You see, monsters can smell demigods…they sniff them out to try to kill them before they get old enough to learn how to fight. That’s what Camp Half-Blood is for: training young demigods how to battle mythological creatures.

Unfortunately, Percy is only at camp for a short while, and soon embarks upon a quest to try to prevent war from breaking out between the gods. You see, Zeus’s master lightning bolt is missing…and he is convinced that Percy has it! Thus, with his new friend, Annabeth Chase (daughter to Athena), and of course the trusty satyr Grover, Percy must travel to the underworld and back, searching for the lightning bolt. If he can find the bolt, and return it to Olympus (which just so happens to reside on the 600^th floor of the Empire State Building in New York City), just maybe he can stop a war between Gods.

Great for kids and adults alike, the Percy Jackson series is not to be missed! These books are surprisingly full of wit and humor. And the Greek Mythology is extremely accurate, so you learn about all of the mythological legends in a fun way that doesn’t make your head hurt.  

Five Stars for the entire series!

 

 

Okay…now for the movie:

If you haven’t read any of the Percy Jackson books, I imagine the movie would be quite enjoyable. But for avid fans of the novels, it is extremely aggravating! They leave out SO MUCH!!!

First of all, let me start out by saying that I absolutely adore Logan Lerman, who portrays Percy Jackson. I have absolutely no beef with him. Great actor.

But the fact that they made all of the characters teenagers in the movie kind of irked me…they are supposed to be twelve-year-olds in The Lightening Thief. AND Annabeth is supposed to be a blonde…AND they didn’t even have her invisibility hat in the movie, which was a major part of the books. Plus, they add characters to the movie that don’t show up until Book 5 in the series! Little things like that throughout the movie and got on my nerves. They also left out some of my absolute favorite scenes and failed to show some major characters, namely the god of war, Ares.  

And Camp Half-Blood looked ALL wrong! The camp is supposed to be comprised of cabins around a central courtyard in a “U” shape. In the movie, they made it look like a primitive camp site with tents thrown out all willy-nilly.

Also, they don’t even make Percy have to figure out who his immortal father is…they’re just all like, “Oh, hey, B T Dubs, yo daddy is Poseidon, mmm kay?”

One thing I did really enjoy from the movie that they got mostly accurate is the Lotus Hotel scene. It was pretty bad ass J

All in all, I can only honestly give the movie two out of five stars. Maybe three stars at most.

I do have to say though, from what I’m seeing of the trailer, it looks like they are trying to correct all of their mistakes with the second movie, Percy Jackson and the Sea of Monsters. I guess they realized that Percy Jackson fans are abundant and were royally pissed with the outcome of the first movie. So fingers crossed and here’s to hoping!