The Titan's Curse -- Rick Riordan
The Titan's Curse, as I'm sure pretty much everyone out there knows, is installment #3 in the Percy Jackson series.
In it, we have:
- Two new, very powerful half-bloods of unknown parentage
- A manticore
- Haiku by Apollo
- Another rousing game of Capture the Flag, Campers vs. Artemis' Hunters
- Multiple automatons
- Zombies
- More time with Blackjack the Pegasus
- A Big Bad who makes Luke look like a weenie
And, of course, much more, including chapters called "Thalia Torches New England" and "An Old Dead Friend Comes to Visit".
Most fans of the series will be totally happy with it and by the end of the last page, they'll be gasping for more.
Me? I'm kind of over it. I still think the series is smart and funny and exciting and so on -- and #3 did have me turning the pages (and how!), but this time around, I found the HP parallels really distracting:
Percy = Harry
Grover (the best friend who has grown up in this other world) = Ron
Annabeth (the brainiac) = Hermione
Camp Half-Blood = the summer camp version of Hogwarts
Kronos (dead Big Bad whose followers are trying to bring back to life) = Voldemort
Capture the Flag = Quidditch
Big Prophecy that might refer to Percy = Big Prophecy that might refer to Harry
and so on. Which is odd, because they didn't distract me before. I'm a bit slow on the uptake sometimes.
Like I said -- I still thought it was smart and funny and exciting, etc. And obviously, the parallels aren't exact -- Percy's parents are alive, the prophecy is different and the relationship between Luke and Annabeth and Thalia is much more complicated than any relationship I can think of between a Death Eater and a Good Guy in the HP books. But there are still a whole lot of similarities.
So that's it for me, for now, I think.
Until the next one comes out. By then, I'll have probably gotten over myself and I'll be ready for more.
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