The Lightning Thief

Yes, it's true, please don't throw anything at me....I know. I cannot believe I have gotten this far in my book reading life without having read a Rick Riordan novel, not even one of his most famous hero one's Percy Jackson. It is such a confession and having heard so many people raving about his writing and how all of her series are so eminently enjoyable and such fun I decided that at the grand old age of 40 I really did need to try reading one.

So, in true Sound of Music style, I decided I'd start at the very beginning with the first in The Percy Jackson series, The Lightning Thief. And yes, I am well aware that this book is absolutely not aimed at people of my mature years however if everyone had said that about the Harry Potter novels then I am sure there would be a number of very disappointed adults out there who would feel they'd missed a wonderful experience and why can that not be true of other authors novels too. Yes this is a children's book but it doesn't mean that it can't be read and loved and enjoyed by anyone.

From the very outset, this book is pretty action packed. We meet Percy Jackson, who is on a school field trip with the other kids from his school, they are a school of delinquents and they are visiting the museum of natural history when Percy has a strange run in with his maths teacher Mrs Dodds. He could swear she turned into a monster and tried to kill him but he somehow ended up killing her but when he comes round no one knows who Mrs Dodds is, their maths teacher is someone totally different and she's been teaching them for months. From there stranger and stranger things begin happening to Percy.

This book is a really fun adventure from start to finish, we quickly learn that Percy is a son of one of the Gods, yes that's right in Riordan's world the Greek Gods are very much real and living right here in the Western World. Percy has a target on his back on account of the fact he may be the son of one of the big 3, Zeus, Hades and Poseidon but which one? He finds himself at Camp Half-Blood, a special summer camp for children of the gods where he learns more about his special powers and just what it means to be a demi-god.

He, just like Harry Potter, has his trusty sidekicks, Annabeth and Grover and in the vein of Ron and Hermione, they are there to help our hero on his adventures. This book has a fair bit of back story building in it but not so much that Riordan hasn't managed to pack in lots of enemies for our trusty trio to face and lots of colourful places for them to visit. I mean who would have imagined that Mount Olympus could be accessed from floor 600th floor of The Empire State Building? Who even knew it had a 600th floor?

I loved this book, it was fun and full of wonderful escapism and great characters. I cannot believe I waited this long to read it. It definitely won't be so long till I pick up the second in the series and spend more time finding out what adventures await Percy and his friends next summer at Camp Half-Blood as this book is left with somewhat of a cliff hanger with gives us plenty anticipation for the story ahead.