Frog’s comment > Likes and Comments

Have you read up on how The Lightning Thief was written? It's actually really interesting: basically, Rick was a professor at a college, (English, I think) and he started writing a short story about a twelve year old boy. Apparently the book was originally named Son of the Sea God, but his students commented that the title seemed to give away too much, so he renamed it The Lightning Thief. Today, I have no idea how I would answer this question, to tell you the truth. I read Percy Jackson a whole year before I read Harry Potter, but I enjoyed both of them! Yes, the Harry Potter world is more complex and developed, but that's because
1.) Her books take place in a secret world that was created solely by her.
2.) She wasn't basing her cities and culture off of things that needed to be accurate. Rick Riordan's books are Urban Fantasy, and Religion, because some Greeks chose not to believe in the gods and monsters, while some depended on them for simple, everyday things.

I guess what I'm saying is, you really cannot compare both series fairly (I don't mean you , Fish, I mean people in general.) They're in different genres, and while you may have seemed to make fair points, read a Harry Potter/Percy Jackson crossover. For some authors, it's obvious that they favor Harry Potter, or Percy Jackson from the way they describe the characters, and have them interact. Some choose to make the demigods more powerful, some chose to make them mysterious, super attractive ancient Greek-speaking beings, who have all of these inside jokes, and some choose to have the Hogwarts kids act differently than their originally written personalities to make them seem more likable.

(I'm sorry I'm shoving all this crap into your comment, Fish, the words just flew out of me, you know?)

Yellow Eccentricity

It's alright, I like long comments.
I do enjoy Percy Jackson, but despite that, I don't believe that in general the two stories are of equal quality.
A single year while writing a book is immeasurable in what it contains, and it would be a dishonest claim by any account to say that Rick attempted to accomplish half as much as Rowling did, even though he told an entertaining and exciting story. Just as I have to admit that Rowling never did as much as Tolkien, despite the fact that I enjoy Harry Potter more.
It's true that Rowling's story demanded more original concepts and ideas while Rick Riordan's was, from the beginning, about an already established mythology and real world places. However, these are not the things that lead me to say he told a lesser story. He uses a number of shortcuts and cheap tricks in his story that J. K. Rowling does not when it comes to character development, plot, and upholding the dignity that the story had set for itself. (I won't go into detail here, unless you ask me to, but I've written a long explanation about those things in my Blood of Olympus review).
By no means am I necessarily putting him down for that. It was the result of writing more quickly and planning less. But it has to be admitted that he wrote more quickly and did indeed plan less.

I think the two series can be compared very reasonably, as two successful fantasy series with similar plot lines and themes. In fact, I think it's wise to look at the ways in which we can tell stronger stories by looking at the things around us and comparing them.
Perhaps there are some things that Percy Jackson does better than Harry Potter. The question is how and why. We should be looking for what makes anything good and try to learn from them, nothing wrong with that.
Thanks for the comment, by the way, I like discussion.