By Rick Riordan

Welcome, dear readers, to the second book of the Percy Jackson series. Unfortunately, I don’t have any interesting stories about how I continue to read a book series, so let’s get into it.

Now for the back of the book, a summary

“You can’t tell by looking at me that my dad is Poseidon God of the Sea.

It’s not easy being a Half-Blood these days. Even a simple game of dodgeball can turn into a death match against an ugly gang of cannibal giants and that’s just the beginning.

Now Camp Half-Blood is under attack and, unless I can get my hands on the golden fleece the whole camp will be invaded by monsters. Big ones.”

My spoiler-free review is very simple. If you liked the first book you will like this one too. Sea of Monsters is an interesting sequel to The Lightning Thief because Rick Riordan plays the balance between the familiar and the new. In this book, we see interesting retakes for some parts of the Odyssey. Unfortunately, I cannot tell you more until you read the book.

Before I get into the sea of monsters I need to cover some things from the last book. We need to talk about Percy’s home life, Zeus and Luke.

I want to talk about Gabe Ugliano. This is not the only book where the protagonist has a terrible home life that they have to return to. Harry Potter is told that he needs to go back to the Dursleys to be safe, and in the end, he forgives them for the terrible childhood they put him through. After Percy proves that he can keep himself safe, he leaves his mom with a way to ensure that Gabe can’t hurt either of them, which she takes advantage of. Some parents will die for their children, Sally Jackson will kill for her son.

 I am very frustrated with Zeus. Firstly, it is very clear that Kronos is at the root of the war, and he brushes it under the rug and forbids anyone from talking about it. Secondly even though he was all ready to start a war with his brothers but when Percy tells him that Aries was responsible for the war. And he doesn’t do anything to punish Aries. Which is a lovely double standard.

Now we get to Luke. Even rereading the book, Luke’s betrayal still hits hard. Initially, Luke is seen as the entire camp’s big brother. Every camper no matter what would spend some of their early time in cabin 11 and living with Luke as your head counsellor. Meaning most of the camp looks up to him. So, when he sides with Kronos and goes against the Gods, that hits harder than if anyone else had done this. The thing is he is not wrong. The Gods don’t always pay attention to their children. The fact that there are so many children who came to camp find out that they are a demigod and then they wait for their godly parent to claim them. And they stay in cabin 11 waiting maybe for years if they claim you at all. My point is no matter how wrong Luke’s choice of rebellion was he has a point.

When it comes to the Sea of Monsters, I have three things I would like to talk about. To start with there is Clarisse La Rue. In many other books, someone like her would be a bully and a minor antagonist. Here we see someone who will yell at Percy for distracting her in battle, but all it takes for her to stop is Annabeth reminding her that she has wounded soldiers. In this book, we see how much she cares about this camp.

Secondly Chriss Rodriguez. Remember when I talked about the unclaimed demigods? Chris was at Camp Half-Blood for 5 years without being claimed. Here is a small spoiler for the rest of the series. We see Chris Rodriguez throughout most of the series, but we never see him get claimed. Can you imagine living there for 5 years, seeing other demigods being claimed by their godly parents?  But his godly parent never sent him anything. He probably would have revolted even if Luke or Kronos had never said anything.

Thirdly I would like to talk about Tyson. I have a theory about what makes Tyson different from other monsters. In the first book, we hear about monsters from the myths dying and returning to life. But some cyclops are still being born. This is probably also how hydras can be tied to chain stores. Tyson is around Percy’s age meaning that he is still growing and learning what he wants to be. Also, unlike other monsters, cyclopes work for the gods in the underwater forges. I believe that cyclopes can grow up instead of dying and coming back repeatedly meaning that they have a choice in how they act. This is also shown by the fact that the only Cyclops from mythology Polyphemus is a monster that was specifically spared by Odysseus. There is a lot I would like to talk about but that will have to wait for next week so for now I will have to say,

Happy reading to all and to all a good night.