The Last Olympian by Rick Riordan

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...

The Infinities by John Banville

Of the things we fashioned for them that they might be comforted, dawn is the one that works. When darkness sifts from the air like fine soft soot and light spreads slowly out of the east then all but the most wretched of humankind rally. It is a spectacle we immortals enjoy, this minor daily resurrection, often we will gather at the ramparts of the clouds and gaze down upon them, our little ones, as they bestir themselves to welcome the new day. What a silence falls upon us then, the sad silence of our envy. Many of them sleep on, of course, careless of our cousin Aurora's charming matutinal trick, but there are always the insomniacs, the restless ill, the lovelorn tossing on their solitary beds, or just the early-risers, the busy ones, with their knee-bends and their cold showers and their fussy little cups of black ambrosia. Yes, all who witness it greet the dawn with joy, more or less, except of course the condemned man, for whom first light will be the last, on earth.

-The Infinities 

When I was growing up, one of my favorite books was D'Aulaires' Book of Greek Myths. I read it cover to cover, over and over again. I didn't grow up with organized religion, so while other children learned Bible stories, I knew the tale of Persephone by heart. Even though the Greek gods seemed both formidable and alarmingly capricious, I was secretly disappointed that they went unworshipped in modern times.

All that is to say, I have a particular affection for Greek mythology, so when I heard about John Banville's The Infinities, I was intrigued.  A story about Greek gods meddling in the affairs of an Irish family--what could be better? I had been watching Battlestar Galactica, in which Greek mythology plays an important part, so I was especially ready to enjoy some Zeus & Hermes action. Unfortunately, while I found the prose of The Infinities to be beautiful, its story left me cold.

The Infinities is a fairly short novel--less than 300 pages--so I anticipated that I would finish it quite quickly. The story, which takes place over the course of a single day, never really drew me in, though. Patriarch Adam Godley is in a coma, and his family has gathered around him to ready themselves for his presumably incipient death.  The day's events are narrated (for the most part) by Hermes, who makes note of his father's lusty advances (shock!) toward a woman in the house, as well as his own mischievous interference. The story is short on plot and long on description, unsurprisingly given the parameters of the novel, with Banville particularly seeming to relish a certain earthiness that I could have done without. I was intrigued by some of his characters (fragile daughter Petra and her would-be beau Roddy, to name two), but I found the gods themselves to be surprisingly...human. And while, as I noted above, the Greek gods have always had human traits writ large, never before have I found that that made them common or boring, as unfortunately I did here.

The Infinities is quite an admired book--made a number of top book lists last year, as I recall--and it does seem like the kind of book that would benefit from a deeper reading. (Maybe then I would better understand the ending, which seemed to come out of nowhere.) I believe, though, that the best books are those that can be enjoyed purely from a story standpoint. You might want to find the deeper meanings if the story is good, but you shouldn't have to do so to enjoy the book. That is probably essentially why I was not an English major, right there.

Up next: Another critically-acclaimed book, The Age of Wonder, which thankfully I'm enjoying much more so far!

The Battle of the Labyrinth by Rick Riordan

"Look, this is going to sound weird. Do you know anything about Greek myths? [...] All those monsters," I said, "all the Greek gods - they're real."

-The Battle of the Labyrinth

When I was a kid, I loved Greek mythology. I had a book called D'Aulaires' Book of Greek Myths that I read over and over again. If you had told me that the Greek gods were real, I would have been really, really excited. (Clearly, I hadn't thought through the ramifications of having to worship the kind of fickle deities who might consign you to, say, push a rock uphill for all eternity.)

I definitely tap into that part of myself when I read Rick Riordan's Percy Jackson series, of which The Battle of the Labyrinth is the fourth book. Percy Jackson is an ordinary kid living in New York who discovers at the age of 12 that he is the son of Poseidon. Accordingly, every summer he goes to Camp Half Blood to train himself to fight the kind of wicked monsters that populate the Greek mythological scene. Over time, he discovers that the Titans (the original gods overthrown by the Olympians) are trying to reclaim their power, and a prophecy suggests that he might be the one who has to stop them. If you're saying to yourself, "Hey, isn't that a bit of a Harry Potter ripoff?" the answer is yes, it sort of is.

Although Riordan does a great job of capturing the voice of a young teenage boy, his stories never rise to the level of Harry Potter. I've never found myself as emotionally invested in Percy's world - in The Battle of the Labyrinth this was particularly evident, as a fight plays out that is quite reminiscent of the invasion of Hogwarts in the 6th Harry Potter book. The Hogwarts invasion had me in tears; The Battle of the Labyrinth's big fight didn't resonate the same way.

That being said, the Percy Jackson series contains some interesting ideas - I particularly like the concept that having ADHD and/or dyslexia is linked to being a demigod. I also appreciate that the series is a great introduction to the characters of Greek mythology, and Riordan showcases a lot of them. Kids reading The Battle of the Labyrinth, for example, become well acquainted with the story of Daedalus. There are also a host of entertaining (and occasionally surprisingly complex) characters, including Nico di Angelo, the tormented son of Hades, and Grover, a satyr who embarks on a quest to find the god Pan.

One quick note: In an earlier post, I extolled the virtues of reading YA books while travelling. Well, I took The Battle of the Labyrinth to read on the train this weeked. My neighbor was reading The Yiddish Policeman's Union. The man across the aisle was reading Slaughterhouse Five. I was definitely dragging down the row's standard for highbrow literature.