Michael Reads Percy Jackson: The Lightning Thief (Ch 6)

I used to be supreme lord of the bathroom like Percy, but then I took an arrow in the knee.

Something weird is in the attic, and there’s sewage water everywhere! So naturally that means it’s time for the sixth chapter of Michael Reads Percy Jackson: The Lightning Thief…

I Become Supreme Lord of the Bathroom

I liked this chapter. It had a lot of exposition, but it’s exposition that previous chapters have given me an appetite for, so it works. Percy gets a tour of the camp, learns that all the kids (including him) have a divine parent, and then unwittingly empties a bathroom’s worth of toilet water on some of Ares’s kids. Percy’s starting to show a bit more awe at this point, too, which is nice to see.

Being a mythology buff, I also enjoyed picking out which cabin belonged to which gods. Percy’s guess confirmed my own that cabins 1 and 2 belonged to Zeus and Hera. Let’s see what I can do with the others: 9, with the smokestacks, is Hephaestus’s, 4, with the tomato vines and grass, would be Demeter’s, and I figure 7, made of gold gleaming in the sunlight, is Apollo’s.

Oh, and if the seashell-and-coral festooned cabin 3 isn’t Poseidon’s, I’ll eat my foot.

“No one ever stays in” cabins 1 and 2. Apparently Zeus and Hera don’t have children? Except this is Zeus we’re talking about, here! Perhaps his children just aren’t allowed in the camp for some reason? Or he sends them somewhere else? Though Poseidon’s cabin is empty, too. Hmm. There’s something more at work here, isn’t there?

Random Observations

• 

  Yessir, got some big dreams, that Grover does!

  I learned that Grover apparently has some big ambitions, and Percy was his second chance after an earlier failure. Somehow, knowing that he hasn’t given up yet makes me like him more.

• Something’s in the farmhouse attic. And it’s probably not alive, given how Chiron swore that not a single living thing was up there. (Not a single living thing? It’s an attic! What about spiders, Chiron, huh? Or perhaps he meant there’s more than one living thing up there. Or there’s one living thing up there, but it’s married? I’m reading too much into this, aren’t I?)
• Percy is told that MOST teachers are monsters. I bet teachers hate this book. Nice way to appeal to kids’ fantasies, Riordan, but kind of a jerkass way to do it. 🙂
• I rather like that monsters don’t die, they just respawn. Maybe Mrs. Dodds really was one of the named Furies and not just some random member of a larger Fury group?
• Percy’s thinking of the possibilities if his mother is in the Underworld. I’m sticking with thinking that she’s not dead; it’s possible that she’s both not dead and in the Underworld, but I’m not sure.

My favorite line/phrase from this chapter is a bit of Percy’s dialogue:

“Look, is there anything we can say without it thundering?”

That does seem to happen quite a bit, doesn’t it?

I’m fighting a cold, so I’m not sure when I’ll get the next chapter posted (reading isn’t a problem but thinking of coherent things to say in a post is), but soon, one hopes!