So obviously I like Percy Jackson. Don't feel bad if you hadn't realized, it's not like I ever write about it ever. Anyway, discussing the new Percy Jackson trailer the other day got me thinking: the original Percy Jackson series is over, the story complete, so it's possible to judge the individual books and how they benefit the series as a whole. I mentioned in the same post that the second book, Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Sea of Monsters is probably the weakest book overall, and it got me wondering which book I would consider the strongest, which of course got me thinking about how I would rank the other four books in the series overall.
Now there are some ground rules here. I'm not just ranking the books based on how much I like them, I'm ranking them on how they relate to each other and the series as a whole. If you don't know anything about the structure of the Percy Jackson books, here's some things you need to know about the books to understand everything that I'm going to say here. First of all, being heavily based on Greek mythology, or rather continuing it in modern times, you might say, the books are all saturated with Greek mythology elements. The heroes are flawed, with real weaknesses, and sometimes the things they do aren't very heroic or they are heroic for the wrong reasons. There's prophesy and magic, and the magical places from the mythology are all real, including Hades, or the Underworld, as well as the city of the gods Mount Olympus. Unlike in most modern stories, though, Hades and Olympus aren't allegories for Hell and Heaven, Hades is Paradise, Purgatory and Hell all rolled together, and Olympus is unattainable without divine invitation. Like in the mythology, the twelve gods of Olympus and the many lesser gods who serve them are all tied to various natural aspects, such as the seas for Poseidon, or the sky for Zeus, or sleep for the lesser god Morpheus, and all of the gods are real characters. They have their own motivations, they are immature, and they look out for themselves first and foremost. They are, like the humans, very flawed characters. The books also feature another prominent old staple of Greek myth: Demigods, or rather half-human, half-god offspring who share some of their parents powers, or are otherwise divinely blessed. There is also a heavy emphasis on the fighting of monsters by the heroes of the story, sometimes the same monsters more than once.
However, Percy Jackson is a modern fantasy like Harry Potter, so while there is still a city called Mount Olympus, it is no longer in Greece, it's floating above the Empire State Building, and the entrance to Hades is no longer located west of the Greek Mount Olympus, it's located west of the new one, in LA. The magical sea that Jason and Odysseus sailed in their respective stories isn't in the Mediterranean anymore, it's in the Bermuda Triangle. Characters such as Dionysus, the God of Wine and Chiron the centaur exist in the same world as cell phones and busses. Percy Jackson is a New Yorker and a son of Poseidon with the power to control water, and make earthquakes and storms. The characters use magic weapons to kill monsters, who go to Tartarus, the worst part of the Underworld, and a magical mist separates the supernatural from the natural, explaining why we normal people don't see monsters everywhere all the time. Greek heroes are trained for greatness and quest for magic items, like Zeus' lightning, or the Golden Fleece, but they do so in the modern day United States. The way that Riordan integrates these stories into a believable version of the modern world is clever and really rather impressive.
Knowing this, you should be able to get the things I'm about to say below, so let's just jump right into it. I'll be ranking these from weakest overall to strongest, excluding Sea of Monsters, as I've already named it the weakest and talked about why.
Book One: The Lightning Thief: After Sea of Monsters, it's the first book in the series that I consider the weakest of them all, not because it is a bad book, by any means, but because it suffers from the same problems as many beginnings/origin stories. With so much to set up, so many people and powers and rules to introduce, the story often feels too linear, like it is only there to introduce these things in the first place. Yes, the rules and people and powers are all interesting, and seeing classic monsters in modern places, like Medusa in a garden statue emporium, or Echidna on the Seattle Arch is certainly cool, and the characters are all complex and interesting right off the bat, with good archs and everything, but the quest is linear and almost episodic, primarily consisting of the characters stumbling upon a problem and then reacting. There are few twists, until the end where the story actually gets very complex very quickly, revealing not one, but two hidden enemies, and setting up the overall story involving two truly threatening series antagonists, one of which you really don't expect, and one of which scares even the gods. I could seriously read or audiobook this book every day, it just isn't as good as some of the others.
Book Three: The Titan's Curse: This book not only introduces some of my favorite overall characters of the series, mainly Thalia Grace, Daughter of Zeus, a punk rock electrokinetic, and Artemis, the Goddess of the Moon and the Hunt, it furthers the storyline of the gods and heroes vs. the main antagonist, the time Titan, Kronos, further than any other, still without actually bringing Kronos into the story, instead introducing the character of Atlas, who has tricked Artemis into taking the weight of the world (or in Riordan's version, the entire force of the primordial Sky God, Ouranos), from him, incapacitating her and freeing him to lead Kronos' army. Even his minions are stronger than the last big villain our heroes fought. It also has the demigod heroes questing to rescue one of the gods, and features a climactic battle that would be worthy of many series' final installments. The main antagonist up until this point, Luke, the Son of Hermes, even dies here, two books early (he gets better though). We even get a sneak preview of a character who will be important in the next book and in every Riordan Greek book down the line. It features some of the strongest female heroes I've seen in a long time, and even though it does turn my favorite female hero ever, Annabeth Chase, into a damsel in distress for a while, it makes up for it by the end. Not to mention it brings into play a realistically portrayed angsty romance subplot that I just can't get enough of. Oh, and Dionysus totally owns some guys with wine plants. Wine plants. Only Die Hard, a handful of Chuck Norris movies, and a few random scenes in other books and movies are more badass than that.
Book Five: The Last Olympian: Longer than the other books in the series, this final installment just reeks of epic endgaminess. It features one of the longest and most detailed battles in modern fantasy, especially what is technically young adult fantasy, deals with moral dilemmas, character dilemmas, addresses the ethics of the gods, who care little for humanity (for the most part), and forces the characters we've known into situations that they just can't handle. Every stage of the battle is treated like a final battle. The characters of the Olympian gods actually develop, something that we've never seen in the mythology before. Characters are redeemed, sometimes at the cost of their lives. Many scenes are genuinely moving, and the conclusion not only wraps up the series and puts a pretty, satisfying bow on top, but opens up new possibilities as well. It concludes the character archs of the awesome Nico DiAngelo, the son of Hades, of the villain, Luke, and of countless other characters, including Hades himself. There are so many scenes in this book that bring the word epic to mind that you'll lose count. It also serves to elevate Percy Jackson to the level of such outstanding heroic characters as Heracles, or the original Perseus. The ending also takes aspects of the established intra-series mythology and boldly turns them upside down, for the benefit of the little guys, here meaning the lesser gods and the gods' children. It forces the Greek gods to actually change and evolve. Also, there's this one scene where one angry girl solo-kills a monster the size of a skyscraper. Remember those random scenes that are even more badass than death by wine plant? This is one of them. It's an action-packed book that manages to be smart, touching, and sentimental, and I love it, though not as much as...
Book Four: Battle of the Labyrinth: There are actually people who consider this book to be the best thing that Riordan has ever written, and even though I haven't read all of his stuff yet, based on what I have, I agree. This story is complex, it ties into the mythology much more deeply than any other, in a way that manages to expand the plot, expand the mythology, and remain entirely its own. While this book doesn't feature the same degree of action as some of the others, it introduces the concept that the lesser gods, frustrated by the lack of respect shown them by the Olympians, have decided to rebel against Olympus, joining forces with the Titans, much like how Sea of Monsters introduces the concept of enemy demigods (though I think we can all agree that evil gods are more threatening than evil kids with swords). It properly introduces the sneak peek character from Titan's Curse, Rachel Elizabeth Dare, a human who can see the supernatural, and who actually saves the world by allowing the main characters to complete their quest. Rachel is fiery and interesting, and everything she does is fun to read. She even throws a hairbrush at the Big Bad's head, earning her my eternal love. There's a two-part climax that elevates both Kronos and Luke as villains, by reviving the long-dead Kronos in Luke's body, basically making him un-killable, culminating in a battle at the end that is the first legitimate threat to the entire main cast, and to their home, Camp Half-Blood. It serves to showcase the true strength of the villains, and to create a delightful sense of dread, since every one of the heroes would have literally died had things not gone exactly as well as they do. It also serves to tie up the story arch of Grover Underwood, the Satyr, Percy's best friend, who is revealed to be the successor to the God of Wild Places, Pan. Minor characters are made important, made human, in the eyes of the reader, so that we actually care if they live or die, making the threats posed by the villains even more serious. This book does exactly what a penultimate chapter should: it advances the plot, it elevates the stakes, and it sets in motion the events leading to the climax. It also introduces two legitimate threats to the main romance subplot between Annabeth and Percy, one of which keeps you guessing until the end of Book Five. The way that everything comes together in this book is almost poetic, and for that reason it isn't only the strongest book in this series, and my favorite, but one of my favorite books of all time.
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