I love Percy Jackson! The movie was so different to the books, I actually couldn't believe how different everything was! Rick Riordan is really a masterful fantasy writer, and I love how much you get to learn about Greek Gods and Greek Mythology, really a fascinating, fast paced, enjoyable read. Love it!
All five books in this series are great! Ignore the film. It messes with the timelines somewhat.
Don't forget to read the Demigod Files. It's mainly character information, but it does contain three short stories about Percy.
The followup series 'Heroes of Olympus' is just as good. Just waiting for the third book to arrive in the post.
Also don't overlook the Kane Chronicles trilogy by the same author. This one concerns the Egyptian gods. The pacing is slightly different to the Percy Jackson and Heroes series of books, but still well worth reading.
Mystic Guildmistress
12 years ago
Mystic Guildmistress
Mage
The film has it's own merit - but I prefer to think of it separately from the books, otherwise the going all over the place would annoy me. They're also in the process of making the second book a movie. In which a certain Nathan Fillion is said to be playing Hermes :)
The Percy Jackson series has to be one of my favourite series. As for the Heroes of Olympus, I don't like how he switched over perspectives so much. I have the Mark of Athena on my bookshelf waiting for me to finish my exams.
The Kane Chronicles are really good too, though slightly less formal because of how it's set out, but still worth it.
I'm rather new to Percy Jackson having picked it up in the last month or two and I love it! :D Definitely on of my favourites. I've managed to catch up all the way to Mark of Athena [act]fangirl emotions[/act] which is sitting beside me. It is unfortunately nearly finished so I'm using some self control and instead of speeding through it I'm posting about it. :P
Personally I liked Heroes of Olympus more than Percy Jackson and the Olympians because of the writing style. I think third person really works and the way Rick Riordan switches fom person to person is enjoyable too, though I look forward to some perspectives more than others (Leo! :D). The plot is also a lot darker; I think Riordan might be recognising that his audience is growing up a bit.
I agree that the movie has great value as just that, a movie, but not as an adaptation which is fair enough. However since they are making Sea of Monsters and Titan's Curse (they've signed Logan for the third as well) I wonder how they'll introduce the plot they cut from The Lightning Thief movie. They did film a scene where Grover tells Percy about Thalia. There's no mention of Luke or Annabeth and the monster hoard was supposedly sent by Hades. In the end it was deleted in Post-Production, though.
I haven't read the Kane Chronicles but I'm half way through the Red Pyramid. I put it down to read MoA. :P It's quite good and there is a different feel about it. I think it's a genius idea that it's the transcript of a recording. . . I don't think that's a spoiler so I'll leave that uncovered.
I'm really looking forward to revisiting Percy, Annabeth and all the other characters back wen they were younger and we'd first met them. :)
(Hopefully I haven't posted any spoilers. I did check but . . .)
I can't wait to get a copy of Mark of Athena, at the moment I'm reading the 'new' (was new like 3 months ago, but it took this long to get a copy from the library) and final book in the Kane Chronicles. I agree Meza, and the audio transcription is a great idea. I also quite like in the Heroes of Olympus the swapping around can make it interesting. I also like it because we have Roman Mythology too, which makes it so much more interesting than just Greek, and I am always surprised that I am actually learning by reading these books, because they are so much fun, and yet you pick up so much about the mythologies, and it can lead into further online research about things, it's really good.
I will be very interested to see how they make the second film. I'm guessing like the first, it is going to be completely different (did they not read the books), but I'll still go and see it, just to see how they have interpreted it.
There is always so much action, and many twists and turns. All of Riordan's works are very riveting.
