The Titan's Curse

The Titan's Curse by Rick Riordan

Confused as to why I'm reviewing this older book? Don't wonder! CLICK THE LINK OF VAGUE DETAILS

Didn't read the first two books in the series? THAT'S OKAY! I reviewed them as well!
Book #1: THE LIGHTNING THIEF
Book #2: THE SEA OF MONSTERS

UNST UNST, the party is getting started with an amazon summary, "When the goddess Artemis goes missing, she is believed to have been kidnapped. And now it’s up to Percy and his friends to find out what happened. Who is powerful enough to kidnap a goddess?  They must find Artemis before the winter solstice, when her influence on the Olympian Council could swing an important vote on the war with the titans. Not only that, but first Percy will have to solve the mystery of a rare monster that Artemis was hunting when she disappeared—a monster rumored to be so powerful it could destroy Olympus forever." AMAZON LINK OF JUSTICE

On a side note, I'm glad I'm rereading this series since I have forgotten some interesting details about the books. MOVING ON.

Also, the summaries continue to be crap. Not surprised....

I'm going to get something out of the way right now; we now know that Percy's birthday is sometime in August; this book takes place in the winter of the same year that The Sea of Monsters took place, so he's fourteen at this point. I suppose I'm mostly bothered that in The Lightning Thief he was twelve, and in The Sea of Monsters he was thirteen, but there doesn't seem to be a lot of character growth going in the matters of actually growing UP. Like, he develops as a character because of the situations he faces with monsters, his friends, on quests, blah blah blah, but it seems like his character just goes completely into stasis when a book isn't happening. I suppose it's not entirely a bad thing so we can see the character growth, but I expect more when there's such big gaps in his life that we don't see.

...meh. I suppose I shouldn't whine TOO much as the books do take about two hours to three hours to read and I appreciate that a lot. There is such a good balance of detail and moving action but it also sets up for the later books and series so much more exquisitely than I thought so before.

LET'S DO THIS.

So this book begins with Percy's Mom escorting Annabeth, Thalia, and Percy to a school in Maine where they're supposed to meet up with Grover about some potential demi-god recruits. They get to the school to crash a high school dance, and funny enough Percy and Annabeth dance together. But by chapter 2, Percy is already trying to square off with the monster that's after the recruits.

The demi-gods they're trying to recruit are a brother and sister; Bianca and Nico. Also, Nico seems to be obsessed with some card game/statue game that is based on Greek mythology. Er, about that. It seems important, plays a minor role at weird points, and I don't want to talk about it.

Also in chapter 2, we find that Percy, Thalia, Nico, Bianca, and Grover are rescued by the Hunters. The Hunters are a band of maidens that have forsworn males and pledged to be on the hunt with the goddess Artemis. The battle winds down with Annabeth being spirited away by the monster.

I'm going to glaze over some stuff for the sake of my attention span. Stuff happens, it's mildly important, but it's not for the overarching plot.

So Grover, Thalia, Percy, and the Hunters all make it back to camp half-blood where they fill Chiron in on what's going on and we find out why all the satyrs are fanned out in schools to get the half-bloods; they're trying to win them over to the good side before Luke can get them. The Hunters are all, "OMG BOYS, NOOOOO," kind of crap and Bianca decides to join them.

Percy rescues a creature that literally looks like a cross between a cow and a sea serpent which he nicknames 'Bessie'. Oh, and we have a two sentence back story of how he came to earn the gratitude of a Pegasus named Blackjack. That would have been unimportant but they randomly pop up. Enjoy.

So, Percy is all woeful in camp and worrying about Annabeth, and the Hunters are all woeful in camp worrying about Artemis (as her Hunters sense she's in danger, but she left them behind when she went chasing after something allegedly terrifying). Percy is all QUESTTTT and the Hunters are like LET US LEAVEEEE DAMN IT but Chiron is like CALM DOWN AND STAY. Then they play capture the flag where the campers (who are few as it's winter) face against the Hunters. Thalia and Percy get into it when they both feel that they been wrong and Thalia zaps Percy, who would have died if he hadn't been a son of Poseidon, and as he's about to retaliate by dumping a creek on her, the mummified oracle drunkenly wanders through the woods, spits out a prophecy at the Lieutenant of the Hunters (Zoe Nightshade) and slumps back into nothing.

This is about a third of the way through the book, so if you don't want spoilers, stop now. CUZ WE'RE HOPPING ON BOARD THE CRAZY TRAIN TO SPOILER LAND.

So the prophecy, and I'm quoting this directly from the book on page 89, "Five shall go west to the goddess in chains, One shall be lost in the land without rain, The bane of Olympus shows the trail, Campers and Hunters combined prevail, The Titan's curse must one withstand, And one shall perish by a parent's hand".

Basically everyone who has a name clambers to go on the quest except for Nico who is just weirdly content with letting everything happen around him. They get all growl-like at each other and it's eventually decided that Percy has to sit out, but three Hunters (including Bianca), Grover, and Thalia will go on the quest. Well, one Hunter gets all mysteriously sick and the group takes off anyways, leaving the sick Hunter behind. Percy is like NOOO BUT ANNABETH; IS THIS LOVE? WHATEVER, HERO TIME! and takes Blackjack out to follow the group.

When Percy was still wavering about whether or not to follow the group, there is a funny, horrible line from his mother. Page 105, "I'm telling you that...you're too old for me to tell you what to do. I'm telling you that I'll support you, even if what you decide to do is dangerous. I can't believe I'm saying this."

...um what? OKAY. PERCY IS FOURTEEN. FOURTEEN. WHAT. LADY, YOU CRAY CRAY. CRAYYYY CRAYYYY. I really liked Percy's Mom for her spunk and weird quirks and support until she went full blown, "WHATEVS, IT'S YO LIFE, DO WHAT YO WANT, YOLOOOOO". ...yeah, Percy's Mom lost all respect points. I hate/love that she says, "I can't believe I'm saying this," and that's basically her last statement on the matter.

So they go for a little ways, Percy stumbles across the bad guys and accidentally gets basically undefeatable enemies unleashed upon him and runs away towards his group of friends on the quest. Excellent. I know.

They traverse through the country side, come across some cool doo-dads, Percy gets a visit from Aphrodite and Ares, and then they stumble into Hephaestus scrap yard. They were warned not to take anything, but Bianca picks up a little statue for Nico's game since it's the only one he doesn't have, and they all get beat up by a giant statue thing that's made out of the junk. To kill it, Bianca goes inside of it, and ends up dying herself in the process. She's the one lost to land without rain.

I'm sorry, but I was given no valid reason to care about Bianca at all. She's just selfish with little quirks. Not enough to like to care. But Percy is all WAHHH, ...so where's Annabeth? and randomly feels guilty about her death.

There's a lot of...moot things that happen in this story. Again, I'm going to gloss over them and just hit some high points or else I'd be re-writing the book here.

So they wind up at the mountain where Atlas holds the sky up to find that's where Artemis is. They have a battle, the Hunter Zoe Nightshade (who is the Lieutenant hunter) is killed by her Father, they have an epic rescue attempt by Annabeth's father and almost everyone gets to go home happy.

Except Kronos and Luke are assembling a crap ton of monsters.
The big doom prophecy of when a child of the big three turns sixteen still hasn't been spelled out for us, it's only been alluded to.
But at least Olympus has started to gear up for the impending war instead of just cautiously watching it and trying to ignore it.

Also, Grover is convinced that Pan contacted him at the end of the book.

I'm done here.

Happy reading!

The Sea of Monsters

The Sea of Monsters by Rick Riordan

Confused as to why I'm reading this older book? CLICK THE LINK OF VAGUE EXPLANATION

Missed the first book in the series? You don't have to! I reviewed it too! THE LIGHTNING THIEF REVIEW

URMAGAWD. LET'S GET THIS...party?....yeah, have an amazon summary. "After a summer spent trying to prevent a catastrophic war among the Greek gods, Percy Jackson finds his seventh-grade school year unnervingly quiet. His biggest problem is dealing with his new friend, Tyson—a six-foot-three, mentally challenged homeless kid who follows Percy everywhere, making it hard for Percy to have any “normal” friends.

But things don’t stay quiet for long. Percy soon discovers there is trouble at Camp Half-Blood: the magical borders which protect Half-Blood Hill have been poisoned by a mysterious enemy, and the only safe haven for demigods is on the verge of being overrun by mythological monsters. To save the camp, Percy needs the help of his best friend, Grover, who has been taken prisoner by the Cyclops Polyphemus on an island somewhere in the Sea of Monsters, the dangerous waters Greek heroes have sailed for millennia—only today, the Sea of Monsters goes by a new name…the Bermuda Triangle." AMAZON LINK OF JUSTICE

You know what? That summary can suck it. Tyson is a good dude. Shut up summary, you just shut up. ...wench.

Alright, so something that only mildly bothers me about this book, is that we don't get to see any of the time that Percy spent with his Mom or at his school except for ONE day. Now, I know the school and mom portions are 'boring' compared to all the action-y and cool stuff, but really? I think more than a few pages of "Oh yeah, the SCHOOL YEAR went great, no problem with monsters, pretttty sweet, oh and my mom hasn't turned anyone into a statue for a while, so that's cool too." I'm pretty sure the later books use this same method of TIME PASSES, but we'll get to that when we get to it.

So the book starts off with Percy going to his last day of school, a few interactions with his mom (also, I'd like to point out that Percy PINES for attention from his Dad but is like 'yeah whatever' at his mom. Apparently she needs to be in some sort of peril to have the care from him), and someone stalking him.

Normal Percy Jackson stuff.

The kids at his alternative school are basically like DODGE BALL TIME, Tyson says they smell funny, suddenly they're monsters trying to murder everything.

Again, normal Percy Jackson stuff.

So Percy manages to escape through shenanigans with the help of Annabeth (who was the one stalking him), they hook up with a taxi driven by the gray sisters who spew off some numbers at them, and Tyson has hopped along for the ride. They arrive at camp half-blood only to find that it's under attack. They go around and punch the mechanical bulls that were attacking them, and turns out Tyson is a cyclops. Then they find out that Thalia's tree (that protects the camp) has been poisoned, everyone is all OH NOES, WHAT WILL WE DOOOO ARGGHHHH (cue stupid noises) and a quest is declared. Some more camp stuff happens in there, but we're glossing over it because long run, not important. The important detail is that Chiron is suspected of having poisoned the tree and is banned from camp until they can figure out who actually did it, or how to cure tree, or whatever.

Tyson is claimed by Poseidon while he's at camp, so Percy is half-brother to a cyclops (which he is stupidly angsty about, no, I don't REALLY want to talk about it except that Percy sucked for a little bit, jerk) and the other campers are relentless with their teasing. The temporary stand in for Chiron declares that chariot races are back on, but the first day of the races, everyone gets attacked by some awful pigeons  After Annabeth and Percy drive them off, campers get more freaked out and later that night Percy and Annabeth propose a quest.

WAIT WAIT. SPOILER LAND. Technically that is a little over a third of the way through the book. So if you don't want spoilers, stop reading here!

But Clarisse gets it. DRAMATIC EYE ROLL, EVERYBODY NOW!

Super side-note, Percy has been having cracked out dreams about Grover who informs him Grover's in danger, and that Grover has established a mental link with him that if one of them dies, the other will likely become a vegetable. Totally fine right?

The night after Clarisse gets the quest, Percy is visited by Hermes who gives him gifts for the quest (although he's totally going on it against the wishes of the camp and Clarisse) where he's joined by Tyson and Annabeth before heading off to a cruise ship to find the golden fleece and fix the poisoned Thalia tree.

They run into Luke on the cruise, find out he's recruiting half-bloods who are also angsty at their parents, find that he's helping Kronos reform, and he's also got a number of monsters on his side. Luke is one serious bad dude. The three manage to escape.

Percy, Annabeth, and Tyson manage to have a misadventure of running into a Hydra, but Clarisse shows up and explodes it with a cannonball. Turns out she was granted a vessel from her father for the quest and is heading to get the golden fleece.

I'm glossing over some details because they touch on some myths like the one that spawned 'stuck between a rock and a hard place' as well as Circe. Both of these I find a little irrelevant and thrown in there simply to meet the greek myth quota for the book.

They make it to the island of the Golden Fleece and manage to rescue Grover and Clarisse, have a big fight with a giant cyclops (name escapes me, irrelevant) that keeps carnivorous sheep as security detail, and has the golden fleece. They get the golden fleece, Percy sends it with Clarisse so she can have the glory of completing the quest.

Then as Percy, Annabeth, and Grover have almost literally had enough time to go, "Hmm...how do we get back to camp?" Luke shows up with his cruise ship, takes them hostage, threatens to kill them, and the trio is saved by Chiron and his hooligan party animal centaur brethren. They take them all back to camp where everything is cleared up about Chiron and the tree. Chiron is reinstated, all the yay, and the golden fleece is placed on the tree.

Poseidon calls Tyson to come to his underwater palace with him to study how to make better weapons in the cyclops forges and only tells Percy to 'Brace himself'. Percy gets all WTF and then Thalia appears from the magic tree as the golden fleece seems to have healed her right out of the tree.

Also, there's a prophecy hinted at that a child of the big three gods (Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades) will make a choice when their sixteen that will ultimately decide the fate of all the gods. Um, what? Yeah, don't worry, later books.

This book essentially ends with Thalia waking up.



So with this installment, I noticed a lot more details that set up for later books and there was more humor woven throughout the story but not overdone. Sometimes I thought the characters accepted everything too easily but then I remembered their half-bloods, so...whatever.

I think this is one of my more liked books in the series because we get to see Percy stepping into his powers a little better as well as more snippets of his life in general.

I liked it. Clearly.

On a side note, I think it took me just under two hours to read this ACTION FILLED BOOK. Pretty sure that's a good thing. :)

Did I miss talking about something that you want to see? Leave a comment!

Otherwise,

HAPPY READING.

The Lightning Thief

The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan

Confused as to why I'm reviewing an old book? Click THE LINK OF ALMOST DETAILED EXPLANATION

I feel like it's almost traditional for me to be lazy at this point, so I'm going to give it an amazon summary. However, Amazon had problems just giving me the first book in the series, so I had to swipe the summary from some weird box set that was going on. WHATEVER. HAVE SOME SUMMARY.

"Percy Jackson is a good kid, but he can’t seem to focus on his schoolwork or control his temper. When his mom tells him the truth about where he came from, she takes him to the one place he’ll be safe—Camp Half-Blood, a summer camp for demigods (on Long Island). There, Percy learns that the father he never knew is actually Poseidon, God of the Sea. Soon Percy finds himself caught up in a mystery that could lead to disastrous consequences. Together with his friends—a satyr and other the demigod daughter of Athena—Percy sets out on a quest to reach the gates of the Underworld (located in a recording studio in Hollywood) and prevent a catastrophic war between the gods." AMAZON LINK THAT WAS STUPID HARD TO FIND

Alright, that summary is crap. I'm going to metaphorically take your reading hands and lead you through some summary the good old way, with ridiculous commentary and remarks that might not make sense.

So the book starts off with Percy giving us a weird greeting where he talks directly to the readers. It lasts for less than a couple pages, and really, I just kind of laughed at it with the thought of, "Oh book, you think it'll take me more than two hours to read you. Ha, ha, haaaa."

It starts with Percy delivering us this sob story of being a troubled, misunderstood kid (everyone who's twelve, you're probably very emotional right now and tend to think the world is against you. Don't worry, a lot of people who are older than you probably understand that. If you listen to some Linkin Park, Evanessence, or Good Charlotte's album The Young and The Hopeless, your angst might make a little more sense. PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT OVER).

So Percy was moved around to a lot of different schools because he gets into trouble inevitably. It just seems to be attracted to him. He also has this knack of standing up to bullies, so that plays into it I'm sure. We're introduced to two important characters right now, and one semi-important character. Grover is his best friend (with a weird name, Grover? It reminds me of RED ROVER RED ROVER except that only one kid is playing, and desperately shouting his name over and over...uh...yeah about that), who Percy tends to stick up for a lot as Percy sees him as weak and timid. Mr. Brunner who is a latin teacher and very adamant that Percy learns latin, greek history, and basically does well in his class. The semi-important character is Mrs. Dodds. In the first chapter, we see Mrs. Dodds turn into some weird monster thing, Mr. Brunner toss Percy a sword (and then disappears), and Percy kills Mrs. Dodds only to find out that no one else remembers her.

Um, what?

So the story moves at a good clip where Percy is suddenly and pretty much harshly thrust into this world where everyone knows what he is but him. His mother knows, Grover knows, Mr. Brunner knows, and even Mrs. Dodds! But she's dead. Maybe.

There's a chase scene where Percy's mom is trying to be all sweet and let him have a little vacation, only to have it ruined by monsters. Grover finds them, and they all try to flee to camp half-blood, but Percy and Grover make it while Percy's Mom disappears into some golden light. This is the end of chapter four.

At this point, anyone who knows anything about Greek mythology has probably figured out that Percy is the son of Poisedon. No, I'm not counting that as a spoiler.

There's a couple weird things that happen at camp but I'll be brief to make this more bearable. It turns out that Grover is a satyr (think Mr. Tummus from The Chronicles of Narnia), Mr. Brummer is actually Chiron (who is a centaur), and the book explodes with explanations about how keeping all this greek stuff is a tricky secret. There are a few fun scenes where Percy inevitably does something ridiculous and gets a little shame faced, but is mostly in awe of himself (adorable right?).

Now technically, this is a third of the way through the book.

OFF TO SPOILER LAND WE GO. Seriously, there's a reason it only takes me about two hours per book to read this. Quick, easy to comprehend, and the only thing that slows me is the little nuggets that crop up that have the elements of foreshadowing about them. This book does a tremendous job of setting up for the later books.

We're going to fast forward through some camp stuff because it's a little tedious. Basic facts, the god Dionysus runs the camp with Chiron to keep him in line. A bunch of demi-gods or 'half-bloods' reside there to escape the pursuit of monsters. Satyrs, nymphs, and driads (dryads?) hang out as well, and the woods there are full of monsters (allegedly). The camp is set up with a lot of traditional greek stuff, blah blah blah. Percy meets some key people such as Annabeth, Jake, and Clarisse. Annabeth will be a future companion and watched over him while he was ill from the Minotaur ordeal, Jake will befriend him and show him around, and Clarisse takes over as being his bully for his camp experience. YAY.

So, Percy gets sent out on a quest because the gods are full of crap and can't keep their hands off each other's junk. Zeus thinks that Poseidon stole his master lightning bolt, Poseidon is all upset about being accused, and everyone thinks Hades is behind it. Percy gets sent out to find Zeus' lightning bolt. After receiving his prophecy about his quest from the Oracle that lives in the attic of the main house at camp half-blood, he chooses Annabeth and Grover to go with him.

They leave the camp, run into some furies who want something back (Mrs. Dodds is a fury LOL), escape kind of, run into Medusa on accident, barely escape with a few hilarious things from Grover, and run into Echidna and one of her sons, a Chimera at the St. Louis arch. The rest of the mortal world is under the impression that Percy Jackson may be some kind of terrorist as he's wanted for questioning about the disappearance of his mother, blah blah blah. They manage to narrowly get through a quest for Ares (because he's a craptastic god), make their way onward to Los Angeles.

They get to LA, get stuck in some weird casino where times passes faster (THIS SETS UP FOR LATER BOOKS IN THE SERIES PLOT, LOLOLOL), escape, make it to the ocean, receive gifts from Percy's father through the father's messenger to help aid in his quest, and manage to get into the Underworld.

On a sidenote, while in LA, they made a passing note about the streets being unsafe and 'gangbangers' was clumped in with muggers. I'm a little disturbed that twelve year olds allegedly see gangbangers hanging out in alleys. Um, what?

At this point, the big evil villain is alluded to (COUGH KRONOS COUGH) and they confront Hades to find that the Helm of Hades was also stolen. Percy discovers that Zeus' lightning bolt was in a backpack that Ares gave him and basically cusses Ares out a little, and then manages to escape Hades' by using the items his father gave him.

Percy gets back to the shore, Ares finds him, Percy challenges him to a wicked duel, kind of wins, gets to keep the lightning bolt and wins the helm of Hades from Ares before giving up the helm to the furies with the promise the furies will explain everything to Hades. Then Percy heads to Mount Olympus, meets up with Zeus and Poseidon, tells him the story, relinquishes the lightning bolt, chats with his Dad, brings up Kronos and crisis averted kind of. Zeus is like I DUN WANNA TALK ABOUT KRONOS, WAH. Percy does like, "Sheesh, someone get this guy a bottle for his whining" but doesn't say anything really. So Percy heads back to his house, finds out his mom is okay, leaves her with Medusa's head (which we find out that she most likely used on her horrible husband and his friends to turn them into statues and sold them off to make enough money for a better apartment, the first semester's worth of tuition and NYU for her, and a deposit on a school for Percy to go to; THE MOTHER MAY BE QUESTIONABLY EVIL), and heads back to half-blood camp.

At half-blood camp, he sees a lot of folks, gets praised for his quest completion, and then has to decide whether to spend the year with his mom or at camp. While he's trying to make up his mind, he runs into Luke who reveals that he's a bad guy, poisons him with a scorpion, and then flees camp. Turns out Luke is working for Kronos. Percy's like OH GOD, NOT ANOTHER NEAR DEATH EXPERIENCE.

Percy wakes up, recounts his experience with Luke to Chiron and Annabeth and Grover before making his decision to go live with his mom for the year and try to attend seventh grade like a normal boy.

PHEW. THERE'S THE BOOK IN A SUMMARIZED NUTSHELL.

Again, I really strongly recommend reading the books; their fast and like James Bond but with Greek myths. Full of action and loosely based on some historical facts about Greek myths.

I would like to say that Rick Riordan has taken the Greek mythology and updated it in a way that almost makes sense; things that are not explained yet, will be explained. He also doesn't offer too much explanation so the details given must be taken as fact within the book's fantasy world or else it's just MADNESS.

Again, they're pretty short, quick reads and written a little young. Just pretend that you're reading the greek version of Harry Potter and it'll all be better. Also, remember that Harry Potter grows up and progresses through all his books, and you should expect the same from Percy Jackson.

I will be going through the series for the next few blog posts so I can read and post about The Mark of Athena in case you didn't click & read the link of almost detailed explanation.

Want me to discuss or talk about a part of the book I didn't cover here? LEAVE A COMMENT. I LIKE TO CONVERSE. :)

Happy reading!

I have this plan...

So, in light of not having quite reached 10 book reviews this month and there still being three days left to the month, I've decided to do something silly.

I'm dragging out my Percy Jackson series and rereading all of them in preparation to FINALLY read The Mark of Athena.

So, if you've read the Percy Jackson series, be prepared for my take on it.

If you haven't read it, I recommend it.

Let's embark on this quest to madness together.

Today, I'll be posting about the first book in the series, The Lightning Thief. No, I will not talk about the movie because I never watched it; it doesn't exist as far as I'm concerned.

January 30th, The Sea of Monsters.

January 31st, The Titan's Curse.

In the days to come, I should be able to tackle The Battle of the Labyrinth, The Last Olympian, and then moving onto the Heroes of Olympus series: The Lost Hero, The Son of Neptune, and FINALLY The Mark of Athena.

I'm very eager to read the Mark of Athena and I'll be sure to make clear spoiler land warnings before I go anywhere beyond a third of the way into the book in any of the books. I'm going to really try to make them all a bit more thorough then I have been (cough cough, we'll see how long that lasts. What's that? Short attention span? WHEEEE).

...so for now, wish me good luck. More posts to come.

...I like comments. IT'S A BIG SECRET THOUGH. DON'T TELL PEOPLE.

Happy reading!

Thai Lettuce Wraps

This recipe was inspired by a friend of mine who made something similar to it, I just tweaked it a little bit to match the tastes of those who shared the meal.

Ingredients:

-Head of lettuce
-Bean sprouts
-Shredded carrots, or carrot match sticks
-Shredded Zucchini
-Shredded cheese (usually mozzarella or some Italian affair)
-Pulled chicken, or shredded chicken
-Sweet Chili Sauce
-Hoisin Sauce
*Raw vegetables can be added or subtracted to tailor to the consumer's tastes

Alright, I failed to take pictures, so I'm going to go draw things in paint about how this all works. I also didn't put quantities down as when I usually put this together, I make too much food or just enough as it's usually for 8-9 people at a time. I'M INCONVENIENT AT TIMES. WHEEEE.

Begin with the lettuce leaf

Assemble other ingredients

...QUESTIONS??? Leave me a comment!

Next time, I will try to include REAL photos so I don't have to use MS Paint again like this. Unless you guys like that. Then that's cool.

Happy cooking!