The palace was as big as the city on Mount Olympus, with wide courtyards, gardens, and columned pavilions. The gardens were sculpted with coral colonies and glowing sea plants. Twenty or thirty buildings were made of abalone, white but gleaming with rainbow colors. Fish and octopi darted in and out of the windows. The paths were lined with glowing pearls like Christmas lights.
The main courtyard was filled with warriors--mermen with fish tails from the waist down and human bodies from the waist up, except their skin was blue, which I'd never known before. Some were tending the wounded. Some were sharpening spears and swords. One passed us, swimming in a hurry. His eyes were bright green, like that stuff they put in glo-sticks, and his teeth were shark teeth. They don't show you stuff like that in The Little Mermaid.
-The Last Olympian
I am getting to this entry a wee bit belatedly, since I finished the book about a week ago, but we'll see what I can do, shall we? The Last Olympian is the final book in Rick Riordan's series about the adventures of Percy Jackson, teenage demigod. In The Last Olympian, Percy, a son of Poseidon, has come to his greatest challenge yet: he must take on the vengeful Titans, those whose power was usurped by the Olympians so long ago.
Things aren't looking so good for the Olympians at the moment. One Titan has escaped his prison in Mount Saint Helens and is merrily making his way east, wreaking havoc among the human population as he goes--and even Zeus himself can barely slow him down. Meanwhile, Kronos is heading straight to New York City, home of Mount Olympus, where Percy and his fellow campers are the last--and only--line of defense. With infighting among the gods and demigods and the presence of a spy among them, a happy outcome begins to seem like a dim prospect. Percy has to go to Hades and back--again--to have any chance of saving life as he knows it.
As always, I found that this series is a blend of some truly intriguing, creative ideas and a sensibility that is designed to appeal almost exclusively to younger readers--and, fair enough, it is YA. But there's just something about Percy's voice that is much more teenager-y to me than, say, Harry Potter's. I don't know if it's an American vs. British thing, or because Riordan was a teenage boy himself at one point; because Percy is just not as mature as Harry or perhaps because he had a more normal childhood--for whatever reason, The Last Olympian and other books in this series feel more like books strictly aimed at children than the Harry Potter ones do. I can't say it's a bad thing--again, these are books written for children--but it does dampen my own enthusiasm somewhat.
That having been said, I'm glad I stuck with the series. I found some of the strands of the story to be pretty compelling--I especially liked the resolution to the Percy/Annabeth/Rachel triangle. The treatment of the secondary gods like Hestia was interesting, and I couldn't help but smile at Riordan's characterization of Persephone and Demeter. The spy thing had me turning pages pretty quickly at a certain point (though I thought the resolution was a little rushed). It's a likeable series and I wish it had been more successful as a film venture, as the books seem as though they would have lent themselves very well to adaptation. As it stands, I wouldn't hesitate to recommend these books to a child--I just might not suggest them to an adult.
Up next: Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time. Yeah. Well, it seemed like a good idea at some point...
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