Great Galloping Gorgons!

If you haven’t read any of Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson series, you’re missing a huge treat! I’m enormously jealous that he came up with such a stunning idea … and then had the skill and wit to exploit it in such an entertaining way. Darn the man for being so clever!

The premise for the series is that the Greek gods were never the Greek gods at all. They were the gods of western civilization. Therefore when the centre of western civilization shifted to Rome, they all upped and changed their names and became the Roman gods … and when the centre shifted to France, so did the gods. There was a problem here, though - the French didn’t believe in them. As a result they did not see them. The gods were still there, doing all the carousing and hell-raising that they had always done, but people were oblivious. The gods then moved to England for several centuries before crossing the Atlantic to their present home … in Manhattan!

Percy Jackson is the result of one of the all too common liasons between god and human - a half breed, or as the cover jacket announces - half boy, half god, all hero! The story is told in the first person, which works very well because Rick Riordan manages to turn even the most horrible moments into chuckle aloud ones with his observation and humour. I’ll say it again - darn the man for being so clever!

Anyone who can come up with chapter title after chapter title that left me desperate to read on, deserves to sell lots of books. Book 1 - Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief begins with a chapter entitled ‘I accidentally vapourise my Maths teacher’. What young person hasn’t dreamed of being able to do just such a thing? This is followed by ‘Three old ladies knit the socks of death’ ‘My mother teaches me bullfighting’ and many many more that just refused to allow me to put the book down. I can’t praise the first book highly enough. It’s a work of genius. I’ve now bought Percy Jackson and the Sea of Monsters because I HAVE to know what happens next. Darn the man for being so clever!!