Michael Reads Percy Jackson: The Titan’s Curse – Starting Point

Cyclopses be crazy!

Having finished The Sea of Monsters, and gathering my thoughts to say at least a little about what I thought of the book as a whole, I’m realizing that reading only about a chapter a week makes it a little harder to keep track of my feelings about the book, or even the book itself. In my memory, it’s been spread across a longer period of time than my experience of reading The Lightning Thief was.

This isn’t to say that I don’t remember things at all. I just needed to give myself a quick skimming refresher. In doing so, it just now clicked into place that Percy saw Thalia in his dream about the sarcophagus in Chapter 13. You were all sniggering under your breath at me for thinking it was Athena, weren’t you? Go on, admit it! (I’d be sniggering if I were you.) I do wonder if Thalia will really hold the Aegis at one point, and I’ll be curious how Athena feels about that.

On the whole, The Sea of Monsters kept my interest in this series strong. Tyson is a great addition to the series, and TSOM has the benefit of getting to work with already established characters (Percy, Annabeth, etc.) , which allows Riordan to give them additional depth now that the introductory requirements are out of the way. (I know I enjoyed developing in A Memory in the Black, book two of my sci-fi series, after getting them established in book one.) I think TSOM didn’t finish quite as strongly as TLT, but taken on the whole, I feel TSOM is the better of the two.

But now it’s time to review the predictions I made prior to starting The Sea of Monsters and see how well (or poorly) I did:

• Percy’s 9 months out in the world before returning to Camp Halfblood will only comprise two or three chapters at most at the start of the book. A few ominous things may occur, but he won’t run into Luke.
  Three chapters, then he hits Camp Halfblood at Chapter 4! I’m calling this one a win, even though the year itself was pretty un-ominous until the last day.
• We won’t see Luke until, oh, halfway through the book at least. (This is a complete guess.)
  Well, 9th chapter out of twenty, so a little before halfway through, but still pretty close, right?
• Dionysus will continue to be a crank.
  Oh my, yes. But Tantalus certainly out-cranked him. (Camp Halfblood’s been overcranked!)
• There will be a new camper at Camp Halfblood who will have something mysterious about him/her.
  Does Tyson count? Because he wasn’t really mysterious at the point he reached the camp, so…I guess I missed this one.
• Said camper will turn out to be a good guy.
  While I suppose my prediction here is technically true, when I made it I meant that they’d be mysterious for most of the book and then wind up being good, so I’m counting this prediction as a miss, too.
• We’ll see harpies and a hydra at some point in the book. Also a hippocampus. (Note: I searched for the cover image above after I made my predictions, so I guess I’m at least right about the hydra, now…)
  Woo hoo! Got ’em both! 😀 (I shall now wiggle my bottom in triumphant manner. …I’m sorry.)
• A kraken will be mentioned, but dismissed as not real, since it’s not actually Greek.
  A complete whiff.
• Grover will return, but will refuse (at least at first) to talk about what he found. He’ll also show up at the perfect time to rescue someone.
  Er, well, I got the very first part of this right. As for the rest, nope! Poor Grover. …Hey, wait a minute. I just realized something. Grover got that wedding dress–and got captured by Polyphemus–in Florida at the very start, right? Polyphemus chased him all the way to Florida?? (Yeah, look at me deflecting from my incorrect prediction…)
• Not only will we see Hermes, we’ll see Poseidon again (probably not until the end of the book), along with Apollo and Artemis. Mostly because I like Apollo.
  Hmmm, does a note count? This is pretty much another whiff, save for Hermes. But hey, we got a lot of Hermes, comparatively, so that counts, right? …No? Hoomph.
• Another Titan will play a role.
  Nope! Completely wrong on this one. But Kronos is enough of a handful.

So, not horrible, but not close to batting a thousand, either. But I prefer it that way–or at least the part of me that likes to be surprised is generally greater than the part of me that likes to be right as much as possible.

And now I leave the one-eyed, no-horned, giant, smelly, Grover-eaters of The Sea of Monsters behind, return again to dry land, and prepare to jump spoiler-free into The Titan’s Curse. (Wait, is it Titan’s or Titans’ ? *checks* Okay, had it right the first time. Just one Titan. I keep hoping for more.) But before I do so, first thing’s first…

What I KNOW about The Titan’s Curse

• Even less than I did about The Sea of Monsters, thanks to there being no movie ads for me to come across.
• Thalia is in it. (Okay, so I’m only 99.9% sure about that, but…)
• Thanks to spotting the cover, Luke will be riding his black pegasus at some point.

My Predictions
(Remember: Don’t tell me how horribly off the mark I am. Just laugh at me behind my back.)

• At some point, Grover will turn up at the perfect time to rescue someone. (I’m recycling predictions!)
• Zeus will make a brief cameo.
• Percy will get a message from Hermes, but we won’t actually see the god in this one.
• We’ll meet Apollo, and he’ll have the biggest part of all the gods in this book. (Okay, so I really just want to see Apollo.)
• The fact that one of the nine Muses is also named Thalia won’t be mentioned.
• Clarisse will get along with Thalia better than she gets along with most people.
• Thalia and Annabeth will not get along at all, until the end of the book.
• “Mr. D.” will get some character development.
• And let’s go for a hail-Mary pass on this one: Before the end of the book, one Olympian god will DIE.

There. I’ve gone on record. I’ve also got my Kindle copy of The Titan’s Curse all ready to go, and I plan to dive into it this weekend. For now, I’ll leave you with the new Michael Reads graphic:

Here we go!

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