Michael Reads Percy Jackson: The Lightning Thief (Ch 8)

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Did you know elephants can’t jump?

Well it’s about danged time! And it’s also time for chapter eight in my series, Michael Reads Percy Jackson: The Lightning Thief…

We Capture a Flag

This will be a quick post. A lot happened but my reactions are pretty brief. Finally it’s made official that Percy is Poseidon’s son! I was boggling at the idea that even after he’s found to be good at canoeing and energized by having water dumped on him, people “weren’t having an easy time of” figuring out who his father was. It occurred to me that perhaps some of them were simply good at keeping their suspicions from Percy.

I was glad to get the explanation about the empty cabins. Even though Artemis is the only remaining chaste goddess in Zeus Is Dead, it hadn’t clicked with me that she’d have no children here, as silly as I feel admitting that. (Okay, maybe I shouldn’t throw stones at the campers who couldn’t guess at Percy’s lineage.) I enjoyed the idea of Zeus, Hades, and Poseidon making a pact to no longer sire demigod kids, especially hearing that their last offspring caused WW2.

A little taste of Thalia the Muse, from Zeus Is Dead

I was impressed with Zeus at first for managing to stick to that pact, until I read about his failing to do so. That guy never changes, does he? And his daughter’s name was Thalia! I knew there was a Thalia in this series, and I knew it was a different Thalia from the one in Zeus Is Dead (i.e. the muse of comedy and science fiction), but seeing the name in print there still startled me in a fun way.

And now she’s a tree. Jerry would like that.

Capture the Flag is a good idea for this sort of camp. (I could be biased, having enjoyed playing that game a lot myself.) It’s too bad the book couldn’t show a little more of the actual game, but I’m not sure how that could have been achieved given the first-person viewpoint. (It also probably wouldn’t have added anything to the story. I just like Capture the Flag. Did I mention I’m biased?)

Speaking of Capture the Flag, I liked Annabeth’s plan, and that, as a daughter of Athena, she had one…though it was a bit of a jerk move not telling Percy. But hey, character development! I still like ‘er.

So now that Percy’s known to be Poseidon’s son, I have a feeling some bad stuff is about to go down. Or at least some exciting stuff. The world has been built, and the end of the chapter is about to launch Percy into it like a pinball. Or, at least, that’s what I’m anticipating. I could be wrong.

“Okay, who brought the dog?”

So who in the camp summoned the hellhound? It’s hard to guess without knowing just what it takes to summon something, though. I have no good answers, but I’m leaning toward Dionysus. He’s cranky, he wants to get back on his father’s good side, and he’s likely the most powerful guy in the camp. That said, I’m not all that confident in that guess.

Random Observations

• Heh. Houdini went to the Underworld! (Hey, I got my wish about knowing of famous mortals from the last chapter.)
• So WW2 was a fight between the big three’s children! Now I’m curious to read some historical mythological fiction there. Was Winston Churchill one of Zeus’s boys?
• Her opponent is standing in water, she’s got an electric spear, and yet Clarisse didn’t think to thrust the spear in the water. Then again, Ares was never a clever sort, was he?

This chapter’s best line is from Percy regarding his losing at foot races to wood nymphs, which just made me chuckle:

“But still, it was a little humiliating to be slower than a tree.”

Okay, so maybe this wasn’t a short post. Sometimes I babble. You can babble back in the comments! (No spoilers for future chapters, yadda-yadda-yadda…)