Monday, October 12, 2009

Percy Jackson and the Olympians



My brother works for the publishing sector of Disney. They have a new series of books that geared towards young adults that he recommended to me. I read all five books in under a month with each book taking about 3 days while reading on the train. So although they are a very quick read, if you are a fan of Harry Potter types of books, I would definitely recommend these.

The story of the book is similar to Harry Potter, but instead of magic the underlying element that keeps the books moving is the premise that all of Greek Mythology is real. Zeus is the king of the gods, Hera is the queen etc, and they sometimes have children with mortal: These are Demigods also called Heroes in this book.

In the first book, the main character named Perseus (Percy) Jackson finds out he is a demigod and gets sent to a camp (kind of like Hogwarts) in Montauk that helps train Heroes. It turns out there is an old prophecy from the Oracle of Delphi (who resides in the attic of the building of this camp) about a certain Demigod changing the course of history on his 16th birthday.

I won't give anything else away, but if you enjoy quick, action packed stories, and if you enjoyed Greek Mythology whenever you learned it, I think these books are a lot of fun.

Like Harry Potter, they also get better as they go on, with the last book being quite good and well worth the time to read the other four previous ones.

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