Poor Percy. If he thought he had questions before, he’s clearly in over his head. And now he’s on the run with his mother. It’s kind of funny seeing him cope with the situation, actually. All he can think to ask is whether Grover and Sally know each other. They don’t really explain other than to say that they knew OF each other. Umm, okay, I’m going to assume that means that she knows that someone like Grover has been keeping an eye on Percy and leave it alone.

Percy notices that Grover not only looks like a barnyard animal from the waist down, he also smells like one, a wet one to be exact. He does the natural thing and asks him what he is, and Grover STILL won’t tell him, saying, “That isn’t important right now.” Holy crap, Grover, just when IS it going to be important. Haven’t you screwed with his head enough already? You suck, Grover.

Then Percy commits a cardinal sin by mistakenly saying that Grover is half donkey.

He’s not half donkey. He’s half goat. A satyr. He warns that some satyrs would sample him for such an insult. But honestly, that’s gentle and merciful compared to what satyrs were generally known for doing in ancient mythology. There’s no nice way to describe their behavior. Let’s just say that it wasn’t nice.

Percy points out what most people think of satyrs: that they’re a myth. Grover’s still upset about being called part donkey. On the one hand, mislabeling a satyr would be a huge mistake given what they would do in myths. On the other hand, Grover has done nothing but lie and gas light Percy for literal months. Where does he get off getting indignant with Percy on this? He’s been terrible to him.

So Grover FINALLY reveals his hand and asks Percy if the ladies by the roadside or Ms. Dodds were myths. When Percy asserts that he wasn’t crazy all along, and asks why they’d be so terrible to him, Grover tells him that he less he knew the less monsters he’d attract. They put “the mist” over teachers and students hoping that he’d think he was hallucinating, but it didn’t stop him from realizing who he was.

Okay, this raises a few questions I have to ask. The first one is, why not just take talk to Sally immediately and tell her he needs to go to the camp she already knew about? Heck, the movie, for all its flaws, actually might have gotten that aspect better. I don’t want to go too deeply into it because I intend to do a review of the film adaptations in the future, but I’m reviewing these works in order of their release. But in the movie, the moment Dodds reveals herself to be a monster, Brunner and Grover agree that it’s time for him to go to camp, and Grover goes to tell Sally.

In way I’m glad they didn’t do that, though, as we had to see Percy with his mother. That’s the only chance we get to see how much she means to him, but it came at the cost of everyone else around him playing potentially devastating mind games with him in an attempt to keep him in the dark that ultimately failed anyway.

All they have to show for their troubles is making someone they’re supposed to protect question his sanity. That’s a terrible decision.

The second question is, why couldn’t they just come up with some other idea, like maybe Ms. Dodds just went crazy and he had to defend himself, or something like that? That likely would have left him less confused, and certainly would have been more convincing. Because to act like he just had a hallucination out of nowhere, that could cause lasting, possibly permanent psychological damage to him. It’s really hard to justify that, and I have to take a point off for that.

They both tell him that there’s too much to explain, while Sally nervously looks in the rear view mirror as they tear down the road. As Grover tells him it’s, “Not much. Just the lord of the dead, and a few of his bloodthirstiest minions,” still upset over Percy calling him a donkey. Hmm, maybe that’s the satyr equivalent of a racial slur or something, who knows?

2

Sally gets more tense by the minute, and takes them past some strawberry fields. I think this might come back later. Maybe. Just maybe. Percy senses Sally’s tension, and it’s really starting to freak him out, especially after he thinks he sees something big in the shadows.

Percy finally puts 2 and 2 together and guesses that they’re going to that summer camp that Sally didn’t want to take him to. And since he doesn’t know jack about what he’s dealing with, he doesn’t understand the connection with the old ladies. Grover finally acts helpful and tells Percy those were the Fates. And he says that they only cut that string “When you’re about to…when someone’s about to die.”

Really, REALLY freaked out now, Percy points out that Grover was clearly referring to him. Grover deflects, and the conversation goes into some B-level vaudeville, before Sally shuts them up. Percy can see something really bad is coming up, but before he can process what’s going on, there’s a bang.

He’s not really sure what it actually was, but it feels like the car exploded, which is how a bad car accident can feel. When I was 3, I was in a horrible accent that I probably shouldn’t have survived, and to this day I still have a fain memory of the truck approaching, and the blast of the car getting hit. Percy doesn’t know quite what happened, but it’s a good bet that it might have something to do with what’s coming.

Sally is getting out of the car which has been flipped on its side. Percy notices Grover, with is eyes closed, moaning, “Food.” Man, he must have really been heavily concussed. Either way, he’s not going to be doing anything for a while.

He sees what looks like a figure the size of a large football player with a blanket over his head and his arms raised. Okay, Percy’s kind of being thick here. He knows Grover is a Satyr. He knows that Dodds was a Fury, and he knows he saw the Fates. Does he really think this is just a regular dude? Really?

Sally tells Percy to get out of the car, saying there’ a big tree he needs to head to. He sees it, which she tells him is the property line. There’s a big farmhouse he needs to go to. Sally wants him to leave her behind, and run, but he won’t without her and Grover. She insists she can’t go there, but he won’t listen, helping Grover out of the car, forcing her to help.

She’s not responding much, mostly overtaken by fear. Clearly, this is something she’s been fearing for years. The big guy heading for him gets closer and Percy sees huge arms swinging at its side, making him realize that what looked like horns actually were horns, and the huge thing that looked like his head, was its head. He still can’t quite process what he’s seeing, but he notices that it’s making grunting noises and lumbering towards them “like a bull.”

Gosh, I wonder what this might be.

Percy gets more insistent that his mother help him get Grover with him, and that he’ll take her with him, though she seems to dismiss the idea, and so he starts pulling Grover out of the car himself. But Sally says that it doesn’t want them. They want him. More importantly, she says she can’t make it past the boundary line. But he won’t listen to her, and he takes Grover, and she reluctantly helps him. It turns out to be a good thing, for Grover at least, as there’s no why he could’ve moved Grover on his own.

Percy looks back at what’s chasing them and sees a seven foot man over-muscled almost beyond belief. Enormous strong arms. Then, we have to have something that takes me straight out of the book momentarily, as it says that it’s wearing underwear, “I mean bright white Fruit of the Looms- which would have been funny, except that the top half of his body was so scary.”

He has a hairy torso and the head of a bull, with a ringed nose, and razor sharp horns. It doesn’t take a lot of thinking to figure out what this is. More importantly, the closer this thing gets, the worse Percy’s chances get.

Before I go further, however, I really need to go into that bit about what it’s wearing. White underwear. Again, Rick has thrown a sight gag into a novel, which is an odd choice, to say the least. Jokes are, of course, complicated, and it’s up to the individual reader whether this was a funny gag. To be fair, I’m older than the target audience, but even when I was Percy’s age I likely would have rolled my eyes at that line.

But to me it wasn’t a funny gag, and it came at the expense of a lot of the tension in the scene. Here we have Sally, his mother, who can’t possibly fight this thing, Grover, who’s unconscious and helpless, and Percy himself, who’s so in over his head that he has no idea what to do. There are times when humor or levity can help, but his seems more like the many, many failed gags Rian Johnson put in The Last Jedi which did nothing but take a good portion of he audience out of the story, and failed even to help with a little laugh. I kinda have to take a point off for that. It doesn’t ruin the scene for me, but if the book itself is saying that it would have looked funny otherwise, it’s basically telling you, “This is a joke. Please laugh, so you don’t think this is getting too dark.”

But I think this needs to get this dark. This is the moment where Percy realizes what he’s up against, and that it’s not going to get any easier. We don’t need jokes here. There’s a scene seven chapters later when, during a fight, there is a moment of levity that’s done really well, and legitimately made me laugh. But this wasn’t the time for it.

And, while yes, again, it’s hard to judge the value of humor, I encourage anyone who thinks I’m being too hard on this gag to look at the image at the top. It’s the German cover for The Lightning Thief. Set aside the terrible perspective of Percy leaping over the Minotaur like he’s trying to be put on Minoan pottery, or the fact that the Manhattan skyline shouldn’t be visible from more than an hour’s drive away, the Minotaur in a pair of tighty-whities just looks dumb.

Sally identifies it as Pasiphae’s son. Percy’s about to say what it is: the Minotaur, but Sally cuts him off, saying that names have power. Umm, I hate to be THAT guy, but “Minotaur” isn’t the monster’s name. It’s name was Asterion. The Minotaur is what it is. That’s akin to saying that mentioning the word wolf will get you attacked by a pack of wolves. I’m not sure where they’re going for with the idea of names having power, but it would help if they actually mentioned the actual name of the Minotaur if they’re going to do that.

Sorry, but that’s a little silly.

They’re still too far away from the tree, but Percy notices that the minotaur isn’t exactly moving towards them with any urgency. Sally knows what he’s thinking, and points out that he has terrible eyesight, and is mostly going by sound and smell, but he’ll find them eventually. Okay, how does she know that? I get that she knows that there are people and creatures around who could help or hurt Percy,  but how does she know enough details about it that she knows what weaknesses it has? For all I know, Percy’s father left her a primer on these things, but I do think it’s a little bit odd.

Then the minotaur picks up the car, and throws it at them. It skids down the road and explodes. I feel the need to quote Dr. Doofenshmirtz from Phineas and Ferb and ask a very simple question: “Why does everything explode so easily?” Maybe a lightning bolt did it, but honestly if one didn’t, the car would, at worst, just catch fire and burn. Gasoline isn’t as volatile as bad action movies have led us to believe. But hey, maybe something did set it off. It’s kind of funny seeing Percy remember Gabe’s warning to leave “not a scratch” on the Camaro. Well, at least that’s not what they’ll notice.

Sally warns Percy that it’s going to charge. They need to wait till the last second and jump out of the ways when it does. Percy asks how she knew this and she says she’s been worried about something like this happening. Okay, this one makes more sense to me. All you need to know is how a bull charges to know that they can’t change directions well. Just watch a matador. Well, the first half, at least. Don’t watch the second half. Seriously, don’t do it. Don’t.

It charges and they split up, and Percy sees just how unpleasant it looks and smells. Rotten meat with dark, ugly eyes.  The minotaur charges, and goes for Percy, and at the last second, he dives out of the way, an, just as she said, it works. Finally, he sees the valley beyond the tree where they’re trying to go. They’re too far away.

The minotaur gets ready to charge again, but this time it’s looking in the direction of Sally who’s set and unconscious Grover on the ground. It charges at her, and she tries the same trick again, but it doesn’t work this time. It reaches out and grabs her by the neck, lifting her off the ground. She looks helplessly at Percy and manages to get out one word to him desperately, “Go!”

And this is a moment that I find powerful. Sally knows she’s doomed. The only thing she wants is for Percy to survive. She’d be horrified by the thought of him putting himself at risk in a vain attempt to fight this monster to save her. She has no chance, and she knows it. She just wants him to live. But her time is up. The minotaur closes his fist around her neck and she dissolves into a golden form and vanishes.

This sends Percy into a rage.

3

Filled with rage, Percy sees the minotaur look over at Grover and determines he won’t lost any more. He screams at it to get its attention, and it charges at him. He plans to do what he did and his mother failed to do, but the monster learned its lesson again. However, Percy manages to make a jump he didn’t think he could pull off, and manages to get on the beast’s head, holding onto on of he horns. The minotaur tries hard to throw Percy off, but it’s just not working.

Grover’s mutterings get its attention, and it turns to charge him. Percy can’t warn him, so he musters all the strength he can, pulls back on one of the horns and snaps it off. In its rag, the minotaur throws Percy off, and he hits his head on a rock, leaving him woozy. Struggling to stay conscious, he takes the horn in his hand, dodges the charging minotaur at the last second and jams it into its side by its ribcage, causing it do disintegrate the same way the Fury did, dissolving into dust, kind of like how killed vampires in Buffy die.

Now that it’s over, the fear, grief, pain, and exhaustion catch up to Percy. He barely manages to take Grover across the property line, then passes out on the porch of the farm house. He briefly gets a glimpse of a fan overhead, a familiar bearded man and a very pretty blonde girl, who says, “He’s the on. He must be.”

The other guy tells her, “Silence, Annabeth. He’s still conscious. Bring him inside.”

I can’t help but think that we’ll be seeing more of her going forward.

This is more like it. The first scene had an action scene, but it was literally over before Percy could even process what was going on. This one lets Percy actually take on the challenge, knowing what he’s going up against. The only gripes I had with this chapter were Grover being kind of hypocritical and upset at Percy, considering how dishonest and potentially damaging he was to him, and well, the underwear on the minotaur. Rick didn’t even need to describe how it looked below the waist, and it could have been just as effective. It’s not like he doesn’t have Percy do that in later chapters, so why not?

Score: 6:10 It could have been better, but we finally got to see Percy face real peril and make it out alive on his own merits. And now we’re finally going to get to know what everyone wanted him to go to.

1 German Lightning Thief Cover

2 Donkey

3 Mad Droopy 

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.

 

1 Gabe Ugliano