Percy Jackson, Coming of Age As a Demigod
Written by Maria Gaura
SANTA CRUZ (September 2009) - Boys in literature have always struggled to come of age, enter the ranks of men, and claim their place in the world. But the stakes are ever higher for modern literary heroes.
Harry Potter had to save the world from the powers of dark magic while going through puberty.
And Percy Jackson, hero of the excellent series Percy Jackson & The Olympians, must overcome dyslexia and attention deficit disorder and preserve all of Western Civilization. It’s a tall order for a hapless 12-year-old, and a wild, five-volume ride for the rest of us.
Like all good fantasy and sci-fi literature, The Olympians bends a few of the rules of reality, and lets the action spin off from there.
The Olympians is set in modern-day New York where, as Percy discovers, the Greek gods of mythology are real, alive, and still meddling in human affairs. Mount Olympus, an airborne paradise, invisibly hovers above Manhattan.
And while the gods’ antics often play out in public, most mortals are easily diverted by “the Mist”, a soothing mental fog that twists and obscures human comprehension. Except for a handful of gifted humans whose eyes are unclouded by the Mist, mortals are unaware that the gods still walk among them.
To be sure, The Olympians follows what seems to be the current template for popular youth fiction. Successful books tend to come in series, the protagonists are mixed groups of girls and boys with special powers, and the action kicks off in the first few pages and never lets up.
The conventional wisdom seems to be that today’s kids are too amped up on electronic entertainment to tolerate leisurely character-building sequences, so you get to know characters on the fly as one action sequence leads to another.
But author Rick Riordan is deft at his work, drawing his characters with swift strokes and a good ear for deadpan, irreverent, youthful dialogue. He’s also funny. For instance, while Olympus bobs above Manhattan, the Gates of Hades lie beneath Los Angeles, a detail that will get a laugh out of any Northern Californian.
The god Apollo loves to recite appalling haiku, Dionysus has been ordered into rehab by Zeus, and the gods overall are a promiscuous bunch, producing and abandoning half-blood children by the dozens. Is this a sly jab at today’s multiply-married parents?
In terms of craftsmanship, the most remarkable thing about The Olympians is how Riordan packs his books with educational value, yet never sounds a pedantic or preachy note. Riordan taught school for years before turning to fiction, and he ransacks the archives of Greek mythology for the characters, conflicts and bizarre animal hybrids that populate his books.
He seeds the narrative with nuggets of history, ethics and etymology, and you walk away from this series knowing a lot about the gods, their symbolic meaning, and the roots of Western Civ., all effortlessly imprinted in your memory by way of a fast-paced adventure.
Riordan must have been a hell of a good teacher, but I bet he’s having more fun now, especially since the first book in the series, The Lightning Thief, has just been made into a major-release movie.
Percy Jackson is the first dyslexic, hyperactive hero I’ve run across, but Riordan plays with our notions of disability by making Percy’s hair-trigger reflexes vital to his survival, and the survival of our culture. Percy may have trouble reading cursive script, but he’s a master swordsman, an ethical person and a rock-solid friend.
The trick to becoming a man, Riordan seems to say, is finding out what you’re good at, who you are, and what you believe in. Don't be defined by what you can't do.
The Olympians is full of peril, fighting, increasingly scary situations and even the death of friends. But this tale has a good heart, and a wealth of redeeming values. I started reading The Olympians for the purpose of reviewing it, but ended up racing through these books, one step behind my daughter, and enjoying every one. I recommend this series for kids and for any adult interested in youth fiction.
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