Rick Riordan's Percy Jackson Series

I just finished reading the five-volume series by Rick Riordan titled Percy Jackson & the Olympians. Intended for Harry Potter devotees who wanted something similar to read, it partially filled the bill for me. And to shift the metaphor a bit, I'm trying to be a "glass-half-full" person. So I generally endorse it. Although...

The Percy Jackson books do introduce the reader to an alternative world running simultaneously parallel to our ordinary reality, much like J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter does. Except with Jackson, it's not the world of magic with wizards but rather Greek mythology with its gods and monsters that prevail. In both series, ordinary folks like you and me (Potter's "muggles" and Jackson's "mortals") are shielded from any direct awareness of this due to either magical spells, or in the case of Jackson, something called "the Mist". Although the presentation of Greek mythology as an alternative reality intrigued me, I felt that the way Riordan presented it was something of a ripoff from Rowling. But maybe that's the whole point: readers want to continue with Potter-like stories. While Rowling spent more effort developing her characters, Riordan's emphasis was plot, with a lot of heavy-going action. There were many violent battle scenes throughout the series, so many in fact that I became somewhat numbed to them. I think this ultimately hindered Riordan's attempts to build up suspense in his story.

The Percy Jackson books were all a lot shorter, too, with none exceeding 400 pages. To me that was a plus. There are some authors who pad their works with too much extraneous material when they should be leaving some things to the reader's imagination. I'm thinking of Eragon author Christopher Paolini as a major offender in this regard.

I felt that I was regressing a bit in my reading level while churning through Percy Jackson & the Olympians. Also, these series tend to grind on one with the mysteries and subplots that grow and continue from one volume to the next until, with the final book, a lot of the text becomes bogged down with reconciling and explaining them.

Still, as fun, escapist reading, I liked this series. For kids, it is also a good, subtle introduction to Greek mythology as well as United States geography. A great portion of The Last Olympian, the final volume in this series, takes place in Manhattan, which I visited last April. It was interesting how Riordan wove various locations there into the story. I understand that Rick Riordan is in the middle of writing and releasing volumes of the sequel to the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series. But at least for now, I think I'll just try something else, thank you. Still, Jackson is pleasant, light reading.