Percy has been away from Camp Halfblood all year, and he actually is okay in his new school. He gets to see his mom more, he doesn’t have to deal with his horrible stepdad, and he can go to the camp every summer. If he hadn’t befriended the homeless boy, Tyson, put into the school, he may have even been popular. However, one of the bullies has some friends visit on the last day of school, they turn into monsters, Annabeth appears, and things go back to being crazy.
The tree that protects Camp Halfblood is dying. Dionysus laid off Chiron, and in his place hired Tantalus, a soul who is tortured by not being able to eat or drink. Naturally, this makes him a little bitter, and he especially dislikes Percy and his friends. Tyson turns out to be a baby Cyclops, and also Percy’s half-brother. When it is time for someone to get a quest, Clarisse is put on the quest to find the Golden Fleece that is needed to save the tree. Percy, Tyson, and Annabeth were going to back off, but when Grover starts dream-contacting Percy saying that he is trapped by a Cyclops, they decide to abandon that approach, escape the camp, and go to save Grover. This leads them on a quest that takes them back across the US and crosses paths with the other quest lead by Clarisse.
I used to consider this a less interesting book than The Lightning Thief. Right now, I am not really sure why? Maybe it was just the time I had read it? Because now I consider this book to be 10x better than The Lightning Thief.
Annabeth was my favorite character when I read this series about 6 years ago. However, when I reread the Lightning Thief, I thought to myself “Wow….she is really…horrible”. I don’t mean horrible like she was a horrible character, but she always put herself above Percy, as if he was less than her, but more often than not he was the one who was getting them out of difficult situations. She wasn’t totally useless, but she wasn’t all high and mighty as she seemed to be. I don’t know how my 11 year old self seemed to just skip over this, but now it stood out like a sore thumb.
However, in this book, I saw some major growth with her character. She became nicer to Percy, nicer to everyone actually. She stopped acting like she always knew everything….most of the time. Her backstory was really interesting to discover throughout the book. I just saw her mature by leaps and bounds.
Tyson is also a very sweet and interesting character to read. I won’t spill too much about him besides the Cyclops thing, since its important, but his backstory is also interesting. Grover doesn’t really grow much in the book, but he is mostly captured for the story. Percy also doesn’t grow that much, but he does get closer to Tyson, Grover, Annabeth, and Clarisse.
I quite enjoyed this book and I can’t wait to finish this first series.
Overall Rating: 5 out of 5 books.
