Let me open by saying...Rick Riordan, I'm sorry for what I'm about to say. I'm an unpublished writer and I know the best I can hope for is that at some point some will like what I write, and some will well, rip it.

I've not been "real complimentary' of these books up to this point, I gave each 3 stars...said they were what I'd call, "not bad". I dropped this one to 2 stars...it's getting to "bad".

First, I must say apologetically that the writing isn't all that great. I know these have sold millions and we have the first movie in what I know a lot of people hope will be a series. I can't account for people's taste, I mean look at Gilligan's Island. Reading these books I must say that somewhere there's probably a toddler with a parent reading them to him/her who is thinking something like, "Percy is just now getting that? I figured it out 5 chapters ago". Percy Jackson is without a doubt as dense as a locust fence post. The kid is written so thick I'm surprised he can get his shoes on. I'd never have trusted this kid with a butter knife, much less a magic sword (of course luckily it won't hurt "mortals" only "immortals' as it's made of celestial bronze. This must be an odd kind of bronze as I know all bronze I've come in contact with is pretty much as solid as any other metal.).

Aside from the usual problem of Percy being so frustratingly (your going to see that word or it's root "frustrate" a few times in this review) thick this book manages to go to new heights in it's efforts to drive readers into banging their heads into walls. Without giving a spoiler, there is another regular character in the books who has been sort of the "counter-point" to Percy's inability to understand the most elementary event. Her character has been fairly well established. SO, to set up the action in this book the author has her do something so frustratingly (yes, there's the word) stupid and against character that I knew things weren't going to go well. Yes, I got what was supposed to be the reason in/for the act...but she'd never have acted so stupidly, not the girl we met in the first 2 books.

There are other problems here that were smaller in the first two books but apparently like wounds left untended have festered and are now overpowering the rest of the story. His playing fast and loose with history and myth are getting beyond my tolerance. He managed to turn Artemis the hunter into a sort of female Peter Pan and her huntresses into a girls club of "lost girls" instead of "lost boys" stuck at that age where little boys go "yuck girls" and little girls go "yuck boys". I could almost hear them singing...." I won't grow up, I won't grow up...I don't want to go to school, I don't want to go to school...." Need I say any more, maybe the story's take on Hercules? Maybe more of the incorrect slant given to the Greek Pantheon?

If ignorance was contagious or misinformation was infectious this book would be banned by the CDC.

I've been treating these books as YA books. They are so frustratingly simplistic I think I need to think of them more as juvenile level reads and go from there. I got them from the library and the next 2 are laying here (the second through the 5th came in together). Were I buying these I'd probably have stopped earlier, this one would bring me even closer to it. Were my kids still small and had they gotten into these I'd definitely go over anything they were picking up from them book by book.

On the positive side (I need to say something positive) the books do manage to show the pettiness and selfishness that was so prevalent in the character of the deities and heroes of Greek myth. It fails in filling that out, but it is there.

I live in hope that the next book won't frustrate me as badly as this one has. "Where there's life there's hope" as the old saying goes...and I keep hoping. I'll drop this volume to 2 stars and hope the next is better.