A review by katymul
The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan

adventurous challenging emotional funny hopeful tense fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.75

What an unspeakably amazing debut this was for Rick Riordan all those years ago. The individual adventures initially feel a bit monster-of-the-week or monster-of-the-chapter, but the characters carry it through. Only at the end do the pieces of several complex plots snap all of the seemingly random pieces together and leave you impressed both with the villains and the author. No part of this book (famously rejected for being "too long") are wasted.

There are few moments that felt a bit tone deaf emotionally -- I'll never quite get over how Chiron and even the young campers expect Percy to all but instantly bounce back from

his mother's apparent death at the hands of the minotaur

, but I suppose that's the life of a half blood? Later in the series that kind of thing might have made a bit more sense, but in both of my readings of this book, I've worried that Percy had accidentally fallen in with a crew of sociopaths who shrug off trauma in children.

Also, Riordan later largely corrects this, but his take on the goddesses of Olympus and especially the character of Medusa leave a lot to be desired.