At any rate, today I'm going to review my favorite of all the Percy Jackson and the Olympans books, The Sea of Monsters. I'll try to be FAIR AND BALANCED, but since this one is my favorite, that might be sort of hard. Come to think of it, perhaps I shouldn't be aspiring to write like Fox News.
Anyway, prepare for
SPOILERS!!!
Pros:
+LUKE!!!: NOW I may finally discuss the character of Luke! In the first book, we meet Luke, the son of Hermes who helped Annabeth get to Camp Half-blood when they were all much younger. Oh, and also Thalia, but she got turned into a tree that protects the camp. However, by the end of the first book, we find out that LUKE HAS BEEN TRYING TO RESURRECT THE TITANS!!! OH NOES!!! WHATEVER IS A YOUNG WARRIOR LIKE PERCY GOING TO DO?! He's going to have a little duel with Luke at the end of the first book and then limp away like a wounded puppy as Luke gets off scott free. By the way, did I mention that Luke has a huge scar running down his face? Man, this guy has anime potential! Then, the second book. So somehow, this seventeen year old gets his hands on a boat, which is pretty awesome, as well as a crew of monsters. Which is also pretty awesome. Here's this description of Luke from book 2:
He'd changed since the last summer. Instead of Bermuda shorts and a T-shirt, he wore a button-down shirt, khaki pants, and leather loafers. His sandy hair, which used to be so unruly, was now clipped short. He looked like an evil male model, showing off what the fashionable college-age villain was wearing to Harvard this year.
He still had the scar under his eye--a jagged white line from his battle with a dragon. And propped against the sofa was his magical sword, Backbiter, glinting strangely with its half-steel, half-Celestial bronze blade that could kill both mortals and monsters. (125)
With the first paragraph, I can't help but to think of Yagami Raito from Death Note (screw you new fans; it's RAITO!!! DX ). With the second paragraph, you're reminded of just how cool this guy is, and you begin to wonder why an anime hasn't been dedicated to him. A battle with a dragon? A magical sword that can kill men and monster alike? (The other swords in this series can only kill monsters) TOO COOL!!! Not to mention that it takes freaking CENTAURS to defeat this kid in the end! You know... CENTAURS. A BUNCH OF THEM. This is why Luke is my favorite character... for the first two books. (I'll complain about him in the next two books! D: )
+Working with the source material: I feel that of all the books, this one has the greatest cohesion, primarily because this book mostly takes from The Odyssey. The first one is just a hodge-podge of myths, the third one has mostly do to with myths of the titans, and the fourth one has to do with myths about Crete. While the third and the fourth have a certain cohesion, this one wins for taking mostly from one source. While I've never been the biggest fan of The Odyssey, despite my collection, it gives this book a sense of direction that I think all the other ones lack.
+Chapter Titles: I think I just have to do this every week, since the chapter titles for these books are always so interesting. Here's a taste of the best:
1. My Best Friend Shops for a Wedding Dress
2. I play Dodgeball with Cannibals
3. We Hail the Taxi of Eternal Torment
6. Demon Pigeons Attack
11. Clarisse Blows Up Everything
14. We Meet the Sheep of Doom
I swear, I want to take a course from Mr. Riordan about how to write titles. I need to learn!
+George and Martha: Hermes' snakes on his cadeuceus, which has been replaced by a cellphone. They're a great source of humor, as evidenced by this scene:
[Hermes] hung up. "Sorry. the overnight express business is just booming. Now, as I was saying--"
"You have snakes on your phone."
"What? Oh, they don't bite. Say hello, George and Martha."
Hello, George and Martha, a raspy male voice said inside my head. (99)
Yeah, this is a pretty funny line, but I think it's also proof that these books were also written with adults in mind as well as kids. For those unfamiliar, this line is a parody off of the famous exchange that was supposedly used in the Burns and Allen show: "Say 'goodnight,' Gracie!" "'Goodnight, Gracie!'" This line never actually made it into the show, but it's pretty famous, nonetheless, and all the parents reading this book with their kids would probably know the line. It's a nice, small gesture towards the adults.
But that really wasn't my point. I just like George and Martha because they're silly. Also, it's sort of relieving to have a god other than Poseidon like Percy. All of the other ones are put off by him, but Hermes is cool (so is Apollo, but he comes in later).
+Tyson: Upon finding out that Percy is the son of Poseidon, my roommate asked, "PLEASE let him have a cyclops as a brother!" Of course, she was referencing the part of the Odyssey when Odysseus meets up with Polyphemus, the cyclops, who is also a son of Poseidon. I was able to say with a certian amount of glee that he does--Tyson. You really can't hate Tyson. Hes a pretty cute character, despite his physical looks and the fact that he's not all up there with brain smarts. How does he live in the human world? Well... I'll let you read to find out!
Cons:
-Lack of Character Development Pre-story: This problem comes up over and over again in this series. While this one isn't so bad, it starts off what I consider to be a very big letdown in what is otherwise a very good series. What I mean is that we're introduced to a character at the beginning of the story that we're just somehow supposed to believe that Percy met and became quite close friends with all in a very short amount of time. It was ok to do that in the first book with Grover, because we knew nothing of this world to begin with. Now that we know the world, sometimes it's hard to believe some of these relationships. In this book, I'm talking about Tyson. He's sort of a plus and a minus at the same time. I wish this book would go into how they met and what Percy thought of Tyson and the nitty gritty and all that, but it just says, "AAAAAND now we're friends!" Granted, it's not the worst mistake that Mr. Riordan could make, but it's more of an irritation that sort of refuses to die in this series.
-Thalia: I'm not a big fan of her. When we're first introduced to her via dream sequence, she's dressed like a little goth/punk girl. I'll give him credit that he actually uses both terms as if they are different terms; many people don't know the difference between "goth" and "punk," which irritates me. I tend to find that authors who go this route are simply looking to fill a demographic. Maybe I'm being a little unfair; I had no qualms about her in THIS book; it's next book that I take issue with her. A lot. That being said, I myself have used this technique before; however, it was in a teen vampire romance novel. Yeah... and in my defense, THAT'S where the money is, right now!
~~~
Well... that's all for now, folks! Perhaps I could have written more, but there is a banana split in the kitchen with my name on it! Bye, guys!
CARTHAGO DELENDA EST!
Riordan, Rick. The Sea of Monsters. Hyperion: New York, 2006.
No comments:
Post a Comment