josemaltaca 25/03/2019
Derivative, yet surprisingly entertaining
The Lightning Thief is the book which booted the wordly acclaimed series of books called Percy Jackson, named after its protagonist. It is a novel written by Rick Riordan, who specialized his literature in inserting mithological elements into the real world and giving them a special meaning. In this case, greek mithology is thrown at all times at the face of the reader. Obviously, this goes with a suspension of disbelief, but considering the fantastical nature of the genre, it is a nitpick easily overlooked.
First things first: it is derivative as hell. I do not know whether everyone is familiarized with a more famous series of books which goes by the name of its protagonist (if there is someone who does not know what I am talking about, welcome to Earth), who lives a normal life despite a couple of strange events happening from time to time, gets ripped from his usual life abruptly, discovers a whole hidden world right under the nose of everyone, go to a special school in which he develops special skills, befriends a funny boy and a very smart girl and battles monsters with his newly developed habilities, only to discover that the person who he thought was the bad guy was not who he was looking for. Does not ring a bell? Try this: there is an invisibility device involved. I cannot be more specific than this as to why the book is a huge ripoff, but with poorer language and not so memorable moments. Besides, there is a plot twist which happens at the end of the book which is so predictable, but so predictable, that I saw it coming as soon as there was a slight hint. Yes, it is this predictable.
However, its reading is not a total loss. No matter how predictable, derivative, simple and poor it gets, it is entertaining. It has pace, and for those who know a bit of greek mithology, it is surprisingly fun to identify creatures, gods and beings straight from the stories. The book, however chaotic it gets at some points by this concatenation of elements, never bamboozles the reader: it presentes context, and shows what each apparition does and what they can do. There are a lot of action sequences, a little confusing at times, but never boring. From explosions to sword fights and magic battles, it is a blast to picture the events. The story is sactisfatory, yet very simplistic. There are some intricacies concerning the Gods, but they are much more like a background to the action oriented journey of Percy and his friends. All in all, The Lightning Thief is a book worth reading, as long as the reader has the ability to ignore its screaming similarities to another more successful series and just sit back to enjoy a mindless action oriented book, with various references to greek mithology to top the cake.