Hey everyone! How're you all doing today? I'm quite well. I'm writing this review a bit later than I'd planned on writing it because I went shopping on iTunes right after lunch and bought six movies that are going to be the subjects of my movie reviews for the rest of the summer and into the fall. You'll find out what next week's review is going to be at the end of my Toy Story review which is going to be coming out sometime tomorrow. For now let's talk about the third book in the Percy Jackson series, The Titan's Curse. There will be spoilers for this book in this review, so you know the drill. Let's get into it.
Of the books I've read so far in the series, I think The Titan's Curse is not only my favourite, but also the most solid of the series. While The Lightning Thief was a great introduction to this world, and The Sea of Monsters felt like a filler, something to pass the time until the next major plotpoint, The Titan's Curse is just a fun adventure and manages to not only do some great world building, but it also advances the story to the point where it can transition to the final two books in the series.
Artemis and the Hunters are an interesting addition to the series. Though something tells me they probably won't be in book four, or the fifth book either, but I guess we'll see. Zoe Nightshade was an interesting character, bringing in the Hercules mythos into the series, which we hadn't seen yet. The other new characters, Bianca and Nico Di Angelo, are okay but I thought they were the weakest part of the book. Together anyway. Bianca actually worked much better than Nico did, mainly because Nico wasn't in the book all that much. I also liked her dynamic with the Hunters.
One of my favourite things about this book was the dynamic between Percy and Thalia. Annabeth is pretty much gone from this book as she's the one who gets kidnapped this time around. But, while Percy and Annabeth's relationship is increasingly becoming more romantically inclined, Percy and Thalia are very much best friends. Which I was waiting to see what would happen since in The Sea of Monsters it was said that either Thalia and Percy would become best friends or mortal enemies. They went with the best friends part. Which is good.
Of course, with Thalia out of the way since she joined the Hunters at the end of the book, the prophecy of a hero destroying the world when they turn sixteen lands completely on Percy, which sucks for him because the Gods now have to decide what to do with him if he should become a threat to them. Which is fascinating because we don't usually see a hero who is actually a danger to the people around him. I mean, I guess we see it with Superman, but most of the time that's portrayed as Humanity's fear of him. This is legitimately, if Percy sacrifices the Ophiotaurus, a.k.a. the Serpent Bull, then he will gain enough power to destroy the Gods, which the Gods are naturally against.
Of course, there's also the little matter of Nico and Bianca being children of Hades, which makes Nico the other possible hero that could destroy the Gods. Naturally, Percy only tells Annabeth and Grover, so that the Gods and Titans don't find out about it. Which is probably the most CW esque line of reasoning I have seen outside a show that airs on The CW. Of course this is a middle grade book, so that's to be expected. It's well written too, it's just very familiar to me.
One thing that I haven't talked about in these reviews so far are the chapter titles. Unlike alot of books these days, each chapter has a title in these books. Which is pretty cool. These ones are pretty great too. For example chapter 15 is called "I Wrestle Santa's Evil Twin". The final chapter is called "I Get a New Enemy for Christmas". Just something I thought was cool.
My favourite scene is at the beginning when Percy, Annabeth, and Thalia go to a school to help Grover with the Di Angelos and they end up going to a school dance. Slowly the series is maneuvering Percy and Annabeth into a romantic relationship, but it's doing it in a more natural way than other book series do. Harry Potter had more books and so they had more time to not only deal with all the Wizarding World stuff, but do the normal everyday things like have Harry and the others fall in love, go to school dances and other things that are part of growing up. And so it can feel a bit slow sometimes. But here it feels like the way these things happened to me, only six years before The Lightning Thief came out. This scene just reminds me of how good the dynamic between Percy and Annabeth is so I enjoyed it.
I realize I bring up Harry Potter alot in these reviews, but it's really hard not to. I mean this series was the next big thing that started coming out as the last few books in the Harry Potter series were coming out. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix came out in North America the year before The Lightning Thief came out. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince came out the same year as The Sea of Monsters. There weren't any other major YA book franchises out at the time, except maybe Twilight since that series started the same year that Percy Jackson started. And even that didn't get popular until the 2008 movie came out. So Percy Jackson and Harry Potter were all there was for kids, since Animorphs was over.
One thing that I'm a bit concerned about is the fact that the world of this series is getting big enough that it could end up being pretty convoluted by the end of it. It's not a problem right now, but there's only two books left in this series, and a few other series to go before the story of Percy's world is over. So it could become a problem in the future, but isn't right now.
Overall, this book was awesome. As I said at the beginning of this review, it's probably my favourite of the series so far, and is the best written of the three that I've read so far. The humour just keeps getting better as the series goes on. Which is something I feel the Harry Potter books began to lose after the first two. I've already started reading book 4 and it's really good so far.
That's going to be it for me for today. I'll be back tomorrow for my review of Toy Story. So until then have a wonderful night and I will talk to you all later. Take care.
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