The Battle of the Labyrinth by Rick Riordan is the 4th book in the Percy Jackson and the Olympians Series.

I’m still having a great deal of fun reading these (yes, my enjoyment has increased greatly since the first book).  I’m actively looking forward to getting to The Last Olympian.  Battle of the Labyrinth adds a few new characters (including my new favorite pet, Mrs. O’Leary, the hellhound) but I haven’t gotten to the point where there are too many to keep track of.  This may be because I’m reading them back to back.

Percy’s life continues to be in danger for much of the book and he and Annabeth must again work together to try to save Camp Half-Blood.  This time they must navigate the famous labyrinth which once contained the Minotaur but now has spread and grown creating a dangerous weapon for anyone who can master its secrets.  Percy and Annabeth are older now (15!) and they not only have to figure out what’s going on with their enemies, but what’s going on with each other (don’t worry, it’s still all very innocent).

Sex, Nudity, Dating –  Our characters are growing up, so the books are growing up a bit with them.  There is a bit of handholding and hugging as well as a kiss. But for the most part, it’s just boys and girls trying to figure out what friendship means at this age.  Grover has a dryad girlfriend.  Some vampire like creatures demand a kiss from Percy. Hera references Zeus having children with people other than her, his wife.  Annabeth explains how Athena has children even though she’s a maiden goddess.  Calypso talks about falling in love.
Profanity –  Does hell count if it’s part of “hellhound”?
Death, Violence and Gore –  Some monsters are killed.  Nico raises the dead.  I cannot begin to comment on how many skeletons.  Kampe is a very scary monster.  There are flesh eating horses (who aren’t that scary).  We’re told how King Midas died, basically being mummified in bronze.  Anteus kills people and decorates his arena with their skulls.  A centaur is murdered.  There is a battle worse than those prior, where campers are actually killed.  It’s this part of the book where things are certainly more perilous and scary than in the prior books. A character is possessed.  Campers are threatened with being flayed alive.
Drugs, Alcohol and Smoking – None.
Frightening or Intense Things – Pretty much described in the death and gore section.

I promise we’ll get back to Percy Jackson soon, but while we wait, here’s the first book in the Pandora series by Carolyn Hennesy.  I couldn’t get my hands on the whole series, so this may be the only one I review.

The Prologue lays out some context, but it becomes clear to anyone familiar with myths that Hennesy is giving an unusual retelling.  Prometheus is punished for stealing fire for mortals, but after years of having an eagle eat his liver, Zeus relents and frees Prometheus. Prometheus is given the box filled with plagues.  He marries, he has a daughter (Pandora) and that is where our story begins.

Pandora (as expected) is linked to the opening of a box that contains the evils of the world.  But in this version, that’s not where the story ends.  Pandora is commissioned with locating each evil (starting with jealous – hence the title) and putting it back in the box.

Made to catch the attention of the tween and teen girl set, Hennesy tries to keep the book modern and mix in faux ancient Greek touches, like calling grades alpha or delta instead of A or D, or having magic conch shell phones instead of cell phones.  It’s something I think a lot of girls would find cute.

The vocabulary is fairly difficult and seemingly at odds with the lighter, ditsier tone of the book.  Examples of harder words include:  insolent, disrespectful, benevolence, carom, cogitating, contemptuous, inept, uncouth, repugnant.

Plus: I like the strong father daughter relationship and it can be typical of teen girls.

Minus: I was not into the shallowness.  Pandora wears a girdle on her toga but wishes for a larger one to make her waist look slimmer.  She worries about pimples like most teenagers, but her mother comments on her skin as well as recommending she iron her hair and maybe lose weight. She wins a makeover for selling the most GoddessGuide cookies but her mother tries all the beauty products on herself.

Odd choice: Pandora has to capture jealousy and needs to find it in its true form.  When she does find it, it is the jealousy a childless woman feels towards those with children.  While this is definitely something that women who’ve been through infertility and suffered with unwanted childlessness can associate with, I’m not sure it’s the best way to get teenagers to understand jealous.  It seemed like an oddly mature choice.

Sex, Nudity, Dating – Pandora definitely likes Tiresias the Younger.  She lets her toga slip off her shoulder to attract his attention.  Reference is made to Oedipus and that you should not marry your mother.  Zeus is lured away by the promise of watching pretty young things skinny-dip. A kiss on the cheek.   Really weird and seemingly unnecessary digression about how high priestesses must be chaste and it doesn’t hurt if they’re barren as well.  But this one woman who was a high priestess met a man, and wanted more, so she retired and you know, got married and had a kid.  But she can be a high priestess again because Apollo restored her virginity.  I honestly can’t even believe I’m typing this.  It’s like those people who believe you can be a born again virgin if you just don’t have sex.  I’m not really sure I support the message or see its place in a book for young girls.
Profanity – “gods”, “simp” which is short for simpleton and seems like Hennesy’s way of saying retard without having to say it, “idiot,”
Death, Violence and Gore – We’re told the story of Prometheus’s liver being repeatedly eaten by an eagle.  The life of a small child is endangered; an angry woman threatens to sacrifice him by holding him over a burning pit.   There’s a threat of tearing eyes from sockets.  A girl is felled by a harpy’s tail.  The girls are in danger of being sacrificed.  The girls become attached to sacrificial animals.
Drugs, Alcohol and Smoking – Prometheus would only tell the story of the box after a few glasses of wine. Pandora’s mother has a headache in the morning from too much wine the night before.  Gods and goddesses drink wine. Pandora’s friend tries to order wine more than once.
Frightening or Intense Things – Not frightening or intense, but at least one of the girls’ families owns slaves (again I wasn’t sure I saw the point of including this).  There is a two headed calf.  Some people are turned into animals or ashes, but it’s done in a humorous and not scary way.  A person has two heads, another two left feet.  A trip to Hades reveals some grossness, a wall of skulls stuck together by bone marrow, curtains made from the teeth of murderers. I guess it’s supposed to be over the top but it is a bit icky.  Callisto has seizures.

The Titan’s Curse by Rick Riordan is the 3rd book in the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series.

So far, what has impressed me the most is that the books in this series are equally good.  I liked The Titan’s Curse as much as Sea of Monsters.  Despite the fact that Riordan relies on a predictable formula that kids love – Percy Jackson and friends face monsters and (usually) win! – he does it very well.  I think another major factor in keeping the series fresh is that although many characters are in multiple books, there are always new characters to keep you guessing and interested.

Sex, Nudity, Dating – Some slow dancing. We meet Artemis and her band of Hunters.  Any girl can join so long as she permanently rejects romantic love and will forever remain unmarried and a maiden.  Thalia says that Apollo is “hot”.  Artemis warns Apollo not to flirt with her hunters or call them sweetheart.  Aphrodite tells Percy to follow his heart.  Angel statues start to tell about their time with lady statues but one of them remembers that Percy &  his friends are just kids.
Profanity – “Oh my Gods”, “jerk”, “dam” and yes, I know the swear isn’t spelled that way, but everyone’s at the Hoover dam and they keep joking around about the “dam” french fries or “dam” t-shirts.  It’s a pretty cheap way to get around actual swearing.
Death, Violence and Gore –As with the other books, the book is a series of battles.  I feel a bit guilty not enumerating the actual acts of violence, but I feel like I’d be typing the books word for word in certain sections.  The battles for the most part aren’t overwhelmingly scary.  Riordan has the reader’s trust that horrible things won’t happen.  There are of course a host of new! scary! creatures to battles.  Highlights include the Nemean lion, a robot warrior and some skeleton warriors that are armed with guns.  Percy dismembers these skeletons but they just reassemble.  I don’t want to give anything away, but not everyone makes it through this one unscathed.  But as I mentioned before, Riordan has the trust of his readers, so don’t expect him to break your heart.
Drugs, Alcohol and Smoking – Dionysus, god of wine is still camp director.  Thalia’s mother died in a drunk driving accident.  Percy’s mom drinks wine.
Frightening or Intense Things – Mostly the battle stuff listed above, and of course, that creepy dead mummy thing that is the oracle is still creepy.

This is the second book in the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series.  No matter what I think of the Rick Riordan publicity machine I have to hand it to whoever decided to clearly number the books in this series.  I detest not knowing what to read next but these seem fairly uniformly clear about labeling.

Fans of Percy Jackson need not fear, because it only takes 17 pages to our first all out Monsters vs. Percy battle.  And don’t worry, Riordan again drops plenty of hints that it’s coming.  Sea of Monsters offers just as much action as its predecessor, but I might have enjoyed it a little more.  There are some new fun characters – evil Tantalus has set himself up as camp director and some of my favorite parts are the descriptions of him trying to score food.  Percy has a new sidekick as well.

Yes, this book is mainly moving from battle to battle.  Anyone familiar with The Odyssey will recognize many of the stops of the sea journey and Riordan’s interpretation of the legendary obstacles.  It was also just a lot of fun.  Riordan is pretty liberal with his interpretations (there’s more than a little poetic license necessary to convert wild, debauched centaurs into friendly “party ponies”) but none but the most ardent purist will resent his changes.

Sex, Nudity, Dating – Annabeth was looking in Percy’s bedroom window.  Again it is clear that the gods have children with whomever they please.  This time we meet children of gods+wood nymphs as well as human+bear.  Some hugging and a kiss on the cheek.
Profanity – While not a curse word, “retard” makes the short list of insults I am not okay with.  “Oh my gods” is used a few times.
Death, Violence and Gore – The battle sequences are sort of blow-by-blow accounts of violence, and again there are a lot of them.  As an adult I didn’t find them particularly gory or fraught with anxiety, but younger ones may feel differently.  Tantalus is a player in this story – his claim to fame is that he killed his own son and served him for dinner.
Drugs, Alcohol and Smoking – A public service announcement in a cab says “when I’m out buying wine…I always buckle up.”  The camp director is still Dionysus.
Frightening or Intense Things – Laistrygonians (spelling variant Riordan’s choice not mine), who are giant cannibals make an appearance.  Stymphalian birds attack.  Hydra.  Zombies, skeleton humans and horses. Scylla and Charybdis, carnivorous sheep.  Riordan loves to play with the readers’ emotions, we’re often led to believe that someone is dead and then they sort of reappear later.

The Lightning Thief (Percy Jackson and the Olympians, #1)

Around here, the movie version of this was advertised on billboards reading something to the effect of:

Rick Riordan’s

Percy Jackson and the Olympians

The Lighting Thief

It was a lot of really big font.  Also a lot of names.  My husband turned to me expecting some type of help or translation:  “What’s with that movie with all the names?”  I couldn’t really help him.  I mean I was familiar with the hype but I hadn’t had any personal experience with any of it.

So now that I’ve read it, I’m prepared to discuss.  The Lightning Thief is nothing if not action packed, moving from one exciting sequence to another.  It’s the kind of constant battling that will without a doubt appeal to a generation that loves video games and television and the instant gratification of text messaging.  Riordan is plenty heavy-handed with foreshadowing so the reader has the opportunity to feel clever at having figured things out all on his own.   (This adult reader may have felt he was a little too heavy handed but I’m not the target audience, so feel free to ignore me).  We’ve been promised that our hero Percy is, in fact, a hero.  We are not denied.  Percy is nearly infallible from the start.  It leads to a certain shallowness of character that failed to impress me, but many readers will find great joy in the predictability of Percy’s success.

I’d recommend this for middle school and up.  We have it in our elementary school library but as with all things that dabble in Greek mythology you’re dealing in certain death, battling and trickery as well as questionable sexual habits on the part of the gods.

Promise me: If one your children or students is reading this book, please make sure they know that Greek mythology is a real thing and that Riordan didn’t just make it all up for the book.  I’ve conferenced with more than one young reader who was pretty certain it was all just created for this series.  As someone who adores mythology it hurts my heart.

Great for: Reluctant readers or action junkies.  It’s certainly a page turner and plenty of fun, grown-ups can feel good about handing this one off because in with all the heroism and battling, Greek mythology is lending the book some classical class.  It does read a bit easier for those already familiar with mythology but for those who are not, grab D’Aulaires’ as a read along or a follow up and keep your readers engaged.

An additional appealing factor for reluctant readers is that Percy himself struggles as a student.  Calling himself ADHD and dyslexic, he struggles with reading and fitting it at school.  He ends up explaining the ADHD as highly tuned godlike instincts and the dyslexia as having a brain hard-wired to read ancient Greek rather than English.  It’s a fantasy many struggling students would be happy to join in but a normalization everyone can feel good about.

Sex, Nudity, Dating – Nancy makes sarcastic kissing noises at Percy.  Percy’s parents weren’t married.  Percy is warned the Naiads are flirts. Wood nymphs joke about running from love-sick gods.  Athena once caught Poseidon and his girlfriend in her temple.  There’s definitely infidelity among the gods.  When trying to decide why two gods may have been a certain place, Percy decides its because the place is mirrored and they could watch themselves kiss.
Profanity – “jerk,” “shut up,”
Death, Violence and Gore – Percy’s mom’s parents were killed in a plane crash and her uncle died of cancer.  Also, there’s the whole bit about Kronos eating and vomiting up his children again, with the added bonus of learning how they chopped him up with a scythe afterward. The oracle is a seriously creepy dead mummy thing.  A motorcycle seat is covered in human skin rather than leather.  A throne made of human bones.  There is frequent battling and many monsters are killed.
Drugs, Alcohol and Smoking – Percy thinks his lunch may have been contaminated with magic mushrooms. Percy calls a teacher an old sot.  Percy’s stepfather has left beer cans all over the apartment and he smokes cigars.  Percy thinks Mr. D the camp director drinks (turns out he’s Dionysus, god of wine).
Frightening or Intense Things – A teacher turns into a monster beast thing with talons.  Percy’s life is in danger pretty much from the outset.  He relates a few creepy episodes from his past as well, including a man in a trench coat watching him on the playground. There are many terrible creatures sent to kill Percy.  A bus explodes.