Reviews with content warning for Confinement - The Sea of Monsters

I love this series, and this is far from my first read through. For some reason Sea of Monsters always leaves me with a little something missing. I'm not sure what it is, but even when I was younger this was always my least favorite of the bunch. That being said, I still love the series overall and this is still a really good book.

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rinku's review against another edition

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adventurous funny lighthearted fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.0

The Sea of Monsters was for me a bit less enjoyable than the previous novel of the Percy Jackson series, mainly because it had quite a lot story elements I wasn’t too fond of. Like I’ve mentioned before, I probably would’ve loved this series if I read it as child but I have the feeling that I’m a bit too old now.

There are two main conflicts this time at Camp Half Blood: Someone poisoned Thalia’s tree, leading to the slow decline of the protection for the demigods. To stop this, Clarisse (lol) is send on a mission to find the Golden Fleece but Percy, his newly found half-brother Tyson, and Annabeth try to find it as well, mainly because Grover is gone and his disappearance is connected to the Fleece. Honestly, this whole plot around

the cyclops mistaking Grover for a female cyclops and wanting to marry him

was just a bit weird and too silly for me. Then, there are other story elements I rarely ever like, like cyclops and giants or a story mainly taking place on the sea.

At least, the pace was again quite fast, even though it was annoying that our main characters fall in one trap after another. What I also didn’t like about the ending was that

characters don’t really die (edit: this changes soon lmao) but are only apparently dead and even then, Percy barely has an emotional reaction. This time, this was the case with Tyson and later Thalia

. Other things I noticed about the story this time were that some plot points really reminded me of HP, like the wild taxi drive at the beginning, or the general plot point that the antagonists try to resurrect the big villain. It also annoyed me that some of the conflicts in the novel were caused my miscommunication because characters are so often interrupted when having important conversations. What I in contrast really enjoyed was the way this novel talks about social issues, like homelessness in reference to Tyson’s character.

Like I’ve said in my review of The Lighting Thief, the characters are definitely carrying the series for me. Percy has a great character development; at the beginning, he’s so terribly mean to Tyson which made me so mad, but later, he realizes his mistakes and even

helps Clarisse

, showing how much he’s grown as a person. Talking about Tyson, he had a bit of a Forrest Gump vibe to him which I didn’t like so much since it reminded me of the cliché depiction of people with disabilities. Furthermore, Luke is quite the cliché villain.

All in all, The Sea of Monsters extends the world of Percy Jackson and further develops its characters, but the rest in this novel was sadly not enough for me to give more than three stars.

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navayiota's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional funny hopeful informative inspiring lighthearted fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

Not my favourite in the series, but still amazing. I love how seamlessly all the myths blend, both with each other and with the modern world- the characters and the locations never seem out of place. Percy is such a relatable character and he's so dear to my heart, I can't explain how much I love the way he's written.

It was really interesting how his run in with Circe kept being brought up, how it seemed to have affected him, how much he reflected and wanted to do better due to it. I'm also so happy he ended up standing up for Tyson the way he did. I have been in both positions before, especially as a kid and it feels great to see a child character make such good decisions. I never had a Percy in my corner growing up, but I hope I can embody his good traits as an adult, and stand up for myself and others when we're mistreated.

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