The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan

The first book I read for this nine weeks was The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan. This book is the first one of the series Percy Jackson and the Olympians, which contains five books in all. The book is of the fantasy/adventure genre and was very compelling for me. The story is about a 12-year old boy named Percy Jackson, who thinks he is a normal kid. He is greatly mistaken and finds out he is actually a demigod. What is a demigod? A demigod is the offspring of a mortal human and one of the Olympian gods or goddesses from Greek mythology. As Percy starts to realize who he is, he finds out that Zeus, the head god, has been robbed of his most prized possession: his master lightning bolt. To make things worse, Zeus is blaming Percy for the crime. Zeus tells Percy that he has ten days to return the bolt or he will destroy the mortal world. With the entire human race at stake, Percy, along with two companions, sets off to find out who really took the bolt and return it to Zeus by the deadline. I really enjoyed reading this book. The plot was totally original and kept me interested the entire book. The author mixed humor and action perfectly to create a deep, but light theme around the plot. The characters are developed well and you can easily relate to the main protagonists of the story. One aspect of the book that I really liked was how the author took a lot of subplots and tied them together. Although some of them did not completely tie up in this book, the remaining books in the series bring everything together without confusing the reader. For example, there is a prophecy is hinted at throughout this entire first book. From the hints, this prophecy seems to carry a lot of weight on how the rest of the series is going to work out. The author, however, never fully explains what the prophecy is in this book. This created a lot of suspense for me and it hooked me into reading the rest of the series. Creating subplots and tying them together in an easily understandable way is a difficult task to do in writing. However, the author definitely nailed it here.

Do the characters seem real and believable? Can you relate to their predicaments? To what extent do they remind you of yourself or someone you know?

I thought the characters in the book were very realistic. Besides the fact that they were half-god, half-human, they thought and acted as any other normal human would. Not all of their predicaments were totally out-of-this-world either. For instance, one of the main characters has to deal with division in the home because her stepmother hates her. You don't have to be a demigod to experience that situation. Unfortunately, anybody is prone to those circumstances. I can relate to Percy in some ways. For example, Percy has to switch schools constantly because of his demigod powers. He has to go through the "new school" experience a lot. I've gone through that a couple times myself.

How do characters change or evolve throughout the story? What events trigger such changes?

At the beginning of the story, Percy meets a girl named Annabeth, a fellow demigod. They don't really get along at first. Annabeth sees Percy as an inexperienced little kid, even though they are close in age. She doesn't trust him and never really opens up to him. Then, they are both sent on the same quest and go through a lot of dangerous situations that bring them closer together. By the end of the story, Annabeth still isn't confident she can trust Percy, but she does open up to him a little more than before.