The Sea of Monsters - Percy Jackson and the Olympians, Book 2

Warning – Here there be Spoilers!

I hope to not have many Spoilers for ‘The Sea of Monsters‘ in this review, but there will be a ton of spoilers for the previous book ‘The Lightning Thief‘.

When last we read about Percy Jackson, we learned that this not-so-mild mannered atypical 12 year old boy was suffering from dyslexia, ADHD and actually being the son of the Ancient Greek god of the Sea, Poseidon! He was enrolled in Camp Half-Blood, a year round camp that trains Half-Blood children how to defend themselves. This was doubly important for Percy for he was a child of one of the ‘Big Three’, the big three being the brothers Zeus, Poseidon and Hades. Children of the big three are more powerful on average than the children of the other gods, which means that they are also bigger monster magnets! Also, the three brothers had made an oath after World War II that they would never again father any children, for there was a Great Prophecy that said that the child of one of those brothers that lived till their 16th birthday would make a decision that would either save or doom Olympus.

We also learned about important people in Percy’s life. Sally Jackson is Percy’s Mother, a mortal who can see through the mist that prevents most mortals from seing the monsters, gods and titans for what they really are. She also is very smart, and loves her son so much that she is willing to live with a rather odious man, physically and in temperament, in order to protect him. She also loves making blue food. Grover, one of his best friends, is a rather brave Satyr who appears to act very cowardly. He is very much like the Cowardly Lion from ‘Wizard of Oz’ in that regard. Annabeth Chase is a daughter of Athena who is just about the same age as Percy, and has been at Camp Half-Blood for 7 years before Percy arrived. Chiron the Centaur, also known as Mr. Brunner when he is Masquerading as a Centaur, is the Activities Director at Camp-Half Blood.

In the last book Percy, Grover and Annabeth quested to find Zeus’ Lightning Bolt in order to prevent a war among the gods, and in the process discovered that the titan Kronos is planning the annihilation of Olympus, the Gods and Western Civilization.

In this book Kronos hatches another evil scheme, and this time it appears he is planning on destroying Camp Hlaf-Blood. Once again Percy, Grover and Annabeth must join forces to save the day.

I enjoyed reading this book a lot. I will say that I think it is by far the weakest of the five books. Anyone who has read Homer has read at least half of this book. Riordan takes the quests almost unchanged from the classic to his story. He counts on most of his readers being young adults and fairly ignorant of Homer. I don’t think that people should skip this book because of that, but it was a little bit of a letdown after the unique charm of the story in the first book. The good news is that the rest of the books do not lean nearly as heavily on the Myths as this book does and are much easier to enjoy as literary creations instead of modern day copies of ancient tales. 

Title: The Sea of Monsters – Percy Jackson and the Olympians – Book 2
Author: Rick Riordan
ISBN#: 978-0786856862
Format: Hardcover