In this book, the narrator, Percy Jackson, finds out that his father is actually the sea god Poseidon. Then, he learns that there is a conflict between Poseidon and Zeus because Zeus believes that Poseidon has stolen his master weapon—the lightning bolt. The narrator must retrieve the lightning bolt for Zeus in order to resolve this conflict, or else the world would turn into chaos. Then, for the rest of the book the narrator describes his quest to finding the lightning bolt.
Overall, I liked this book very much. It was fast-paced, easy-to-read, and incredibly suspenseful. Every page was full of excitement as I never knew when the next danger would arise. Also, I liked how the author based this story on Greek mythology, for this made the story extremely interesting and also educational. It refreshed my memory of the things that I already knew, and allowed me to learn more about the gods and characters of Greek mythology.
There was one thing about the book that I really didn't like, though. I really disliked the part where Percy's mom turned his step-father, Smelly Gabe, into a statue by having him look at Medusa's head. Yes, Smelly Gabe was a horrible person who treated his wife and step-son terribly. However, I still don't think killing him was acceptable, especially when his smell had shielded Percy from the monsters for all these years.
Even worse, neither Percy nor his mother seemed to have viewed this as an atrocious act. Instead, they seemed quite happy about what she had done! This is just wrong. How could the author portray the supposedly-good characters like this? How could he condone such a heartless murder?
Fortunately, this was the only part of the book that I found incredibly horrendous..
