The Sea of Monsters ~ Rick Riordan

The Sea of Monsters (Percy Jackson and the Olympians: Book 2) ~ Rick Riordan

SPOILER ALERT! This is a series. If you have not read The Lightning Thief, read on at your own risk!

Percy Jackson narrowly makes it through his seventh grade year alive, and it is time to go back to Camp Half Blood. Being the son of a Greek god, Percy, along with all of the other half mortal children of the Olympians, is a hero in training. For years Camp Half Blood has been the only safe place for the sons and daughters of the Greek gods to study and train to fight the monsters and other evil forces that seem to follow the heroes everywhere they go. But when Percy arrives at camp he is horrified to see that the safety he had counted on has been destroyed. The camp he loves is under attack. Someone has destroyed the protective barrier that surrounds Camp Half Blood by poisoning a VERY important pine tree. (It holds the spirit of Zeus’s daughter.) It seems that the only way to heal the pine tree and save the camp (and the campers) from being overrun by monsters is to find the famous Golden Fleece. Percy quickly discovers that the Golden Fleece is now located on an island in the deadly Sea of Monsters and that the monster that holds the fleece is a blood thirsty Cyclops. As if saving the camp and its inhabitants isn’t enough incentive, Percy has one more reason to go to the Sea of Monsters. Grover, a satyr and Percy’s best friend, is being held hostage by the very same Cyclops who has the Fleece. The quest is complicated further when Percy runs into Luke, a half-blood hero gone bad, and his band of evil doers who seek to destroy all of the Olympians and the entire western world. To top it all off Percy must come to terms with the knowledge that he has a half brother who is a monster!

While I didn’t find this book quite as good as the first one (and what sequel ever is), I still really enjoyed the story. I found myself reading more and more quickly. Percy gets into one predicament after another, and I just had to keep reading to find out how he got out of the next one! The author uses a technique that I really came to appreciate in this book. He will have one of the characters give a tiny hint about some secret or a story that Percy doesn’t know. Then, somehow that character will be interrupted and Percy doesn’t get to find out the whole story (or the whole secret) until later. Percy (and the reader) must discover some information piece by piece, and sometimes the pieces are widely scattered throughout the story. It keeps me wondering because I know the author will reveal all eventually; I just don’t know when! One thing that bugged me a little in the first book and continued to bug me in the second was how gullible Percy and his friends can be! They meet these mysterious strangers in out of the way places who seem very nice and helpful at first (too nice and too helpful!), and Percy and his friends walk right into the trap every time! And it IS a trap EVERY time! I think it would make the story a little less predictable if at least every once in a while the nice person really is just a nice person! As it is, every time I read about some stranger being nice to Percy, I am screaming at him in my head, “RUN, YOU DUMMY! IT’S A TRAP!” I guess I need to remember that these books are written for a younger audience though, and knowing that something bad is going to happen before the main character even figures it out is part of the fun. It’s like watching a scary movie where you can see the bad guy sneaking up on the main character and you just want to yell, “TURN AROUND! HE’S BEHIND YOU!”

I think this series is an excellent one for kids and adults who really love fantasy. The books are fast paced and easy to read. These books are part of a series and should NOT be read out of order. This series has five books! I love finding a series that has more than two or three books. I know I have lots of great reading ahead of me!