So Grover, Percy’s best and only friend, the guy who said he has to protect Percy, is panicking, acting like he’s expecting him to die. Then he goes to the bathroom and asks Percy to wait for him so he can walk him to his apartment.
Yeah, I think I’d bail too.
He calls a taxi and takes a ride to his apartment, and I find it interesting that they actually list the street corner he’s going to, and, after a quick look on Google Maps, I can confirm that yes, in fact there are a number of apartment complexes in that neighborhood. It sounds odd to say, but it’s nice to get an accurate location if they’re going to be that specific. Not all stories do (I’m looking at you, Broken Bow, the pilot of Star Trek Enterprise).
Then Percy goes into his mother for the audience, going extensively into detail about her virtues. “Her name is Sally Jackson, and she’s the best person in the world, which just proves my theory that the best people have the rottenest luck.” Her parents died in a plane crash, leaving her with an uncaring uncle, who she had to drop out of school to take care of when he developed cancer, only for him to die, leaving her alone.
He has nothing but good things to say about her, and apparently the only good thing that ever happened to her was meeting his father. That’s interesting, given that he vanished, leaving Sally to raise Percy without him. According to Percy, he disappeared when he was very young. “Lost at sea,” she says.
Hmm, can’t help but imagine that maybe, just maybe, this might be just a bit of a hint as to who Percy’s father is.
Sally works her way to get her diploma, and wants to write a novel, but she’s struggling to attain that goal. Her candy place at Grand Central Station does sound pretty nice. Sweet on America. Percy mentions how she never gets mad at Percy, even though he knows how difficult he can be to deal with. Given that Percy has his problems (literally getting kicked out of six schools in six years), it makes me wonder if she’s really being nice or if she’s just a little too nice.
Though she’s not really a single mom per se. She married Gabe Ugliano. Percy described him as nice for the first time you meet him and then became a jerk. He calls him “Smelly Gabe” for his unpleasant character and, well, odor. He’s a scumbag who runs an electronics store in Queens, though he apparently usually doesn’t work there, rather spending his time collecting checks and spending the money on beer and poker. It’s kind of convenient that he’s as unpleasant to look at as he is to deal with.
Percy’s over-the-top negative description of Gabe seems a bit much, but it doesn’t necessarily mean he’s wrong. Though Percy might be misinterpreting his bland reaction to him returning home. “So, you’re home,” he says. “Got any cash?”
Gabe is playing poker with a few of his friends, blaring ESPN in the background. I feel the need to address a couple of things here. Taking away the fact that he’s a slob, and hitting Percy up for cash, nothing the guy is doing is really all that wrong. The guy’s an adult. I’ve played poker a few times, and it’s kinda fun. It’s not something I feel the need to do once a week or something, but it’s a fun little thing to do with your friends.
Percy also gripes about the ESPN apparently, and I can’t help but be pretty annoyed at this. It feels like Riordan is taking a dig at sports fans, as in every example that includes sports in the entire PJO series is not only negative, it’s cartoonishly negative. I’m a sports fan. I love watching all four major leagues in America. I’m an adult, and it’s my right to watch that as much of that as I darn well please. That doesn’t make me a lazy scumbag. It means I have something I’m passionate about. You can make a guy look bad without doing something like that.
I have to question why a guy who has a job would ask a 12 year old for gambling money, but that’s a small matter compared to bigger issues. Percy uses this as proof that Gabe is a jerk. “No, ‘Welcome home,’ or ‘How was school?'” Percy, you do realize that you just got kicked out of another school, right? I’m not really defending the jerk, but him not being that happy to see you doesn’t mean he’s a jerk. He could be upset that his stepson can’t go a year without being kicked out.
Then Gabe compounds them by bullying Percy into giving him a few dollars to gamble with. Makes me wonder where Percy got that money from in the first place, but, oh well. They don’t dwell on that. Gabe’s fellow players even chide him for what’s a Grade A douchebag move, but he won’t give up. Percy storms aways from him, giving him what amounts to enough money to buy a combo meal at a McDonald’s, and goes to his room.
I have to dive deeper into this Gabe character. He’s barely a character. I’m not saying he can’t be a jerk. That’s not the problem. Harry Potter had to live with his mother’s sister’s family and they were all jerks to him. But there’s a major difference between them. Petunia Dursley had reasons for hating Harry and mistreating him. Those reasons were awful, inexcusable, and made her a completely awful character, but they were reasons. More importantly, those reasons make sense to her. Petunia resented that Harry’s mother drew more attention and reveled in not being normal. Harry was simply a receptacle for that resentment, as he constantly reminded her of everything her sister was.
But what about Gabe? Well, he actually does have some reasons to resent and dislike Percy. Percy keeps getting kicked out of schools year after year. Whether or not this is Percy’s fault isn’t the issue. The issue is wether it makes sense to Gabe that he resents him. It could happen. After all, Percy isn’t even his son.
But we don’t get any definitive reason for Gabe to hate Percy other than Gabe is a jerk. He looks ugly, smells, treats Percy like crap, and, as we will see very soon, treats Sally poorly as well. This is way, WAY more of an obstacle for Percy than anything else. Being an unpleasant person is more than being a walking collection of negative traits. If we had any indication at all for a motivation of one kind or another for his behavior, then it wouldn’t be a problem for me, but honestly, it kind of take me out of the story a little bit. Immersion means you don’t feel like you’re actually dealing with a plot device.
I get the feeling that Gabe is supposed to be an analogy for King Polydectes, the villainous king from Greek myth who intended to marry the mother of Perseus, the namesake of Percy, but it hasn’t been handled well. Giving him the surname Ugliano wasn’t exactly the most subtle way to handle him, and it makes him just that much more difficult to take seriously as anything but an obstacle for Percy, which is something the reader should never feel while reading a book.
Percy’s room has been trashed by Gabe, and just as he’s ruminating about his surroundings, Sally comes home. Her warmth seems to rejuvenate him, which I like. Everyone needs someone to be able to help their troubles go away, especially during bad times. Honestly, it reminds me of my own mother, who, no matter how much trouble she’s going through, is, and always has been happy to talk to me, and help my day better.
Rather than punishing Percy for his failure to return to his school, Sally mostly seems content to have him back, and wants to comfort and help him find a new place for the next school year. I’m honestly curious how much of this she holds him responsible, but at the moment, she wants to know how he is. Then again, with Discount Vernon Dursley as the other parent, she probably feels the need to let him know that he has someone on his side.
Percy kind of slips up and gives Sally a hint that something bad happened on his field trip to the museum, which unnerves her something fierce. But she doesn’t linger on that long, as she already has a plan to take Percy to Montauk on Long Island so they can have a few days to relax before they worry about the future.
Gabe, not surprisingly, is only content with letting them go, on the condition that Sally make dip for his poker games and that Percy apologize for the horrible crime of coming home during his game, while he yells indignantly a Sally for not making more dip yet, in spite of the fact that SHE JUST GOT HOME FROM WORK. This is begging for a legitimate reason for why she married him.
They’re taking Gabe’s ’78 Camaro, which he warns Percy against damaging, and prepare for the trip. Before he goes, Percy makes a gesture he saw Grover make on a bus. It causes the screen door at the apartment to slam on Gabe, sending him back up the stairway. This is probably the first in a long list of sight gags that Riordan weirdly likes to throw into his books. Gags like that are difficult to judge, but I can’t help but think that they’re play better on a TV show or movie.
They get to the beach house, which isn’t much, but Percy loves it. He can’t help but think that Sally loves it because it reminds her of his father. He can’t help but ask her about his father, and she goes lovingly into him. That he was kind, and Percy’s green eyes and dark hair take after him. She says he’d be proud of him, though he can’t possibly figure out why that might be. I can understand that. He can’t help but wonder why anyone would think him as anything but troubled at best, and a failure at worst.
Percy remembers a warm glow he remembers from his father, and is surprised to learn that his father left before he was born. Then he really messes up and asks if Sally keeps sending him away to boarding schools because she doesn’t want him around. I can’t completely rip into him for being a complete jerk there, as his experience has to leave him questioning his own worth, but man, that really hurts her.
He’s further surprised to learn that in spite of never having met Percy, he had, of all things, a summer camp he wanted Percy to attend. Sally says that she’s been trying to keep him safe, and a few memories come to mind for him. He remembers a story of when he killed two snakes left in a crib when he was a baby. I shouldn’t need to explain this, but that’s a direct parallel to Heracles, when Hera tried to kill him the same way when he was a baby. He also remembers being stalked by a Cyclops as a toddler.
Before he can ask more about why she wouldn’t let him go to the camp, Sally starts to get emotional, and he has to let it go for now. Honestly, this is one of the strongest scenes the book has had so far. It’s clear that Sally absolutely loves Percy, regardless of his circumstances, and we started to see hints about his elusive parentage. It’s also good to finally see that it isn’t strictly anger for Percy. It’s frustration, which hasn’t come across much until now. He clearly loves his mother, and the last thing he wants is for her to think of him as a failure, which, having been kicked out of his sixth school in six years, is all he thinks of himself as.
It also shows that Sally has problems of her own. Percy laments that she can’t attain her goals in her situation as is, married to Gabe. He suspects that she’s not completely blind to her realities, as she kept her family name, and her tradition she has with Percy of having blue food. For some reason Gabe didn’t believe such things existed, prompting her to prepare every kind of blue food she could think of.
It’s difficult to read that part in way, as Sally legitimately seems to feel like she’s been beaten down by life, and devotes a lot of energy trying to shield Percy as much as she can. It’s nice to see from her, but honestly, speaking from personal experience, it’s a little hard to read, and not because it makes me not like her. It’s because this sort of thing takes a toll on people, and I can’t see how this wouldn’t be doing the same thing to Sally. Worse still, Percy himself seems to realize this for himself, and it’s clearly weighing on him.
Percy goes to bed, and we get the first indication of the dreams that he’s no doubt going to have going down the road. An eagle and horse fighting on the beach. This is a pretty indication of an Olympian power struggle going on. It’s also the first of many, many dreams which allow us to see other things going on while still keeping the story from Percy’s perspective. And while I do have issues with it being solely from his perspective, this is a fairly clever way to get around that narrative barrier. As he sees the horse and eagle fight in what looks like a fight to the death, he tries to run towards them, but seems stuck in time, while he hears horrible laughter from somewhere else.
He wakes up in a start, and hears a horrible storm outside. Sally wakes up as well, thinking it a hurricane, which seemed too early in the year for that. And truthfully, June does seem unlikely for a Long Island Hurricane. Not impossible, but very unlikely. But that thought quickly get interrupted by a hard knock on the door to the cabin, only to open it up and see Grover, of all people. Well, sort of. Percy notes that something seems wrong about him.
Sally immediately asks what Percy didn’t tell her, as she can tell that this isn’t good news. Then Grover lets out a curse in Ancient Greek. And I can’t help but notice that it was one that mentioned a god by name, Zeus in particular. That’s not the smartest thing in the world to do, especially given the capricious nature of the Olympians, especially him. However, Percy is alarmed by the fact that he could tell that Grover was speaking in Ancient Greek.
Sally gets more upset with Percy as she’s ever been, and demands that he tell her what happened, and he nervously does. She immediately tells them to get ready to leave, though Percy has no idea where they’re going. But now, just now, he notices that Grover isn’t wearing pants. His legs are shaggy, and he finally understands why Grover walked so strangely. And he looks down and see that Grover has cloven hooves. Whatever he thought his situation is, he now knows that it’s all unraveling.
This is by far the best chapter so far. The previous two had massive flaws that really hurt my immersion. Honestly, I’d probably have an even higher opinion of it had it not been for the extremely one-note nature of Gabe’s character. We can see Percy has a strong relationship with his mother, and it feels natural. And the end of the chapter leaves us on a pretty good cliffhanger. We know we’re headed somewhere, and it looks like we’ll get a some answers, or at least get close to some of them.
Score: 6:10 Gabe took the score down a bit, but we’re starting to head further into the plot of the book. Plus, this is probably the last time we’ll see Percy talk to Sally without some crisis in place for a long time.
A Balloon and Something Bad Happens 
