Percy Jackson and the Olympians series

I just finished the first book in Rick Riordan's series Percy Jackson and the Olympianscalled The Lightening Thief. Percy is a kid with dyslexia and ADHD who is constantly kicked out of schools for creating problems, even though he has no control over them. It turns out that he is what is called a half-blood, a child of one of the gods of Olympus and a mortal. After "accidentally" vaporizing his math teacher, Percy is literally chased to Camp Half-Blood by the Minotaur. Camp Half-Blood is where all the other kids with one mortal parent and one parent who is a Greek god.

Percy isn't quite as brooding as Harry Potter, and he actually has a pretty dry sense of humor; the chapter headings are hilarious when you discover what they are referring to.

The premise of the book is actually a very clever one, that the gods revered by the Greeks are still among us today, just not as visible to humans as they once were. Riordan has created a believable culture around these half-mortal children, and if you know your Greek myths you'll get a kick out of how he stays true to them but also turns them a bit on their heads.

There are ultimately five books in the series; the second one is The Sea of Monsters. In this one, Percy goes on a quest with his friend Annabeth and his half-brother Tyson, who is a cyclops. They must retrieve the Golden Fleece in order to save the tree where Thalia, daughter of Zeus, is imprisoned. The third is called The Titan's Curse. In this one Percy joins the daughters of Artemis, called Hunters, to save Artemis and Annabeth from Kronos, lord of the Titans.

The next in the series is The Battle of the Labyrinth. I loved Mary Renault's books as a kid, particularly the one about Theseus and the Minotaur, so this next Percy Jackson book should be fun!

I have now finished the fourth and fifth books in this series, The Battle of the Labyrinth and The Last Olympian, and I must say that Percy Jackson is a worthy successor to Harry Pottery. As I've said, the premise of Riordan's books is very original and he has created a very realistic and believeable world. There is a lot of action, with cliffhangers at the end of every chapter, and some fascinating characters. He ties it all together at the end, but I was left with wishing I could read more about Percy, Annabeth, Grover, Chiron, Tyson, and the other characters.