This is a fun book, a re-thinking of all the Greek mythology we all ran into more or less as kids. I reveled in it, loving and more or less believing all the books in a set in out bookshelves at home – fairy tales, knights in shining armor, Greek god/desses and all.
The Titan’s Curse, third book in the series The Olympians by Rick Riordan, is supposedly a kids’ book. Fast paced and simple in the way that Westerns are, it has sympathetic characters – humans, demigods, satyrs, cyclops and all. Plus a magical sword called Riptide, disguised as a fountain pen. And settings in the stratosphere, on trains, in, above and under the sea, in cars, in ballrooms.
Listening in on the conversation between Percy (Perseus) Jackson, our hero, and goddess Aphrodite is quite a treat – and technically, a good trick on the part of the author, to keep to the truth of the ancient stories in such a correct way.
The gods who are parents of these demigod kids can be very capricious in bailing them out of trouble, and even of starting trouble. They may tip the scales one way or another, but they also let the stories play out in their own way. The prophecies in the stories do warn us when someone is going to be disappearing / killed / turned into a tree – much like the Harry Potter stories do.
Super fun. A friend of mine has nearly an entire collection of Riordan’s many series. I may just work my way through all those shelves.