As a lifetime lover of books and all things magical, I decided that I'd like to start talking about my favorite series of books and also television every now and again and I thought that I would start with Rick Riordan's Percy Jackson series for my first Let's Geek Out post.
For those who aren't familiar with Percy Jackson, or maybe saw the awful movies they made that don't measure up at all to the books, I'll give a little bit of background. To me, it is almost similar to Harry Potter in that it is about a seemingly ordinary young man with extraordinary origins who is faced with challenges that we mere mortals could not even dream of. Except that Rick Riordan did. Percy Jackson and his friends are demigods, or the offspring of both god and mortal parents. In the books, they face a series of challenges that echo classic Greek myth and deal with them in new and interesting ways. I don't want to give too much away in case anyone out there does want to read them but that's the gist of it.
Considering that I, yet again, preordered Rick Riordan's next book on Amazon the other day, I felt it only fair that I should probably write a bit about his book series since I think it is also safe to say that it is one of my favorites.
I initially picked up the Percy Jackson series of books in 2010 when my family was headed to Florida to go to DisneyWorld. I'm a travel reader and wanted to make sure that I would have enough material to encompass all the downtime we had on the planes and outside of the parks which meant boxed set. I started and finished all of the first three books in the series and immediately checked out the rest from the library when I got home.
Being a longtime mythology nerd (especially Greek mythology), reading and listening to the stories was doubly fun because I knew which myths they were mentioning and recognized the parallels between the story arch I was reading and the one that originated thousands of years ago. While it's a series for young adults, it is definitely a great series of books and an interesting way to brush up or learn about mythology as you go.
The feelings of sadness I experienced after I finished the books was intense. Only to find out that he had released a whole new series of books that now incorporated Roman myth as well as the Greek called the Heroes of Olympus. I learned about this while I was still working at the college bookstore and luckily was able to read the first two books for free during my work hours at the desk (this is also how I read the Hunger Games series and Divergent). Since quitting that job over two years ago, I've had to start paying for my literature and I don't mind at all.
It bothers me immensely that these are out of order. Son of Neptune is the second book, then The Mark of Athena.
I've preordered and devoured the last three, now four, books that have been released in the series on my Kindle and I can't wait till October 7th to read the next one!
I have a feeling that The Blood of Olympus will be the last book in the series and that bums me out a bit but I think that it should be a really exciting read nonetheless.
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