Percy is an okay character, courageous and loyal, and I liked him in this book too (although I have found him a bit too oversentimental when it came to Tyson). Annabeth is a bit more likable now that she got over the first shock of a daughter of Athena having to join forces with a son of Poseidon. She still has her moments though so she’s still not one of my favorite characters, though I couldn’t quite put my finger on the why. As for Tyson, I could see the author wanted to make him child-like, with a child-like innocence too. Only – we’re talking about a guy more or less same age with Percy, who went to school with him for a year, in the corresponding grade, but cannot express himself except in short sentences? Other than that I admit he is a nice guy and all, but I wasn’t very fond of having him around.

It was sort of amusing to discover who the arch villain in the series is: Kronos, who has been torn to small pieces and thrown in the darkest depth of the Underworld, is now planning a comeback:

“He is re-forming,” Luke said. “Little by little, we’re calling his life force out of the pit. With every recruit who pledges our cause, another small piece appears—”

Just like Voldemort in the HP series :) (I expect the similitudes between the series to stop here though, but still I am amazed at how many they are).

It is once again quite a cool thing to get to see mythological creatures in modern times: Tantalus, whose food keeps escaping him, the Graeae, who are now more or less cab drivers, despite having only one eye between the three of them, Hermes, whose caduceus is now a cell phone powered by the two snakes (George and Martha), Circe, still weaving at her loom, running a spa and turning all men to Guinea pigs, and many more. It is also worth mentioning that the Sea of Monsters, a mythical place whose geographical location keeps changing, is now right into the Bermuda Triangle (which sort of explains all the ships and planes gone missing hee hee).

A little thing that had bothered me in this book (and that I vaguely remember bothering me on the first book too) is how Annabeth’s strategies are usually the very same ones other mythological heroes have used before. Which would have been all right with me (after all they’ve been proven to work so why change them) if I didn’t have the feeling that Annabeth is presenting them as her own (or at least Percy thinks so, although he has studied Greek mythology himself so he was supposed to find them familiar if not remember them right away).

What I liked most: I was happy to see the explanation for Percy’s name (as I wondered, when reading the previous book, why was he given the name of a son of Zeus when he isn’t one). My theory was that the author wanted to keep the reader guessing who might Percy’s father be for as long as possible. I like the author’s explanation so much more though :)

That Perseus always won. That’s why my mom had named me after him, even though he was a son of Zeus and I was a son of Poseidon. The original Perseus was one of the only heroes in the Greek myths who got a happy ending.

What I liked least: For some reason I am increasingly bothered by expressions like “oh my gods” and “thank the gods”. I have no idea of the reason, although I do have two theories about it (but none of them seems to actually put the finger on it): firstly, even though gods exist, there still is God, presumably more powerful than all of them, so why ignore His merits? Secondly, I think the original expressions (oh my God / thank God) have sort of lost their literal meaning (I wouldn’t be surprised to see an atheist use any of the two plus I very much doubt people are thinking of God when saying “oh my God”) — so why the need to “update” them, to take them literally, since we usually don’t?

Recommend it? Yes.

This book is a sequel to:
The Lightning Thief

This book is followed by:
The Titan’s Curse
The Battle of the Labyrinth

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