Percy Jackson

I have been reading Percy Jackson. Now... I like the idea. I think the movie was okay. I liked the book a lot.

Except...

He's 12. Sure, half-god, superman, but still 12. I mean - this is what you should be seeing. This is a 12-year-old girl (Joey King) and a 12-year-old boy (Quinn Lord with green eyes and black hair). You know, 12, the age when Harry Potter fought the snake in the dungeon. Remember how bravely Daniel Radcliffe tried to fight the basilisk but didn't manage to look very convincing? I do. That is a 12-year-old.

This 12 years old superchild beats the other superchildren the first week he's on the superchild camp. All the other superkids have more experience, knowledge and training.
He fights an adult super-superman within a month and - wins? An adult super-superman who is an expert in fighting. This kid has barely held a sword in his hand before June of his 12th year alive, but who cares, he manages to keep his side against the thousands of years old God. Yeah...
And the guy who wrote this is a father...

He likes Greek myths. He's been studying Greek myths. In depth. But he doesn't recognize Dionysos when he sees him, doesn't recognize a faun when he sees one, doesn't recognize anything he sees... and he has to be explained things from... eggs. I mean - he's sitting by a table with a satyr, having killed a minotaur and seen a flying horse, and the guys have to convince him that he lives in a world where the Greek gods are not just tales... I mean... I would believe I was dreaming or something, and if there are satyrs in my dreams, sure, pour in Greek gods and anything. I'll believe. Geesh.

It's like Donaldson and the white gold guy. Every step of the road insisting nothing that happened was happening, and even though some unbelievable, miraculous things happened all the time - like he not having leper any more - he refused to believe he was "not in Kansas anymore", and everyone else in the world he was knew better than him what it was all about. No way. Idiot.

They yap at him about not mentioning names, but when he guesses, then the names start dropping all over the place. Geesh!

"You mean the Greek gods are here? Like ... in America?”
"Well, certainly. The gods move with the heart of the West.”

What?!

What?!

WHAT!?

Oh, yeah. Europe is dead. Who cares what happens here. This is the Old World, so old it's practically dead. Just like the Old Testament, you know. Joka vanhoja kaivaa sitä tikulla silmään, as they say.

The girls' bathroom "smelled just like any public bathroom" - I don't think so. Girls' bathrooms don't smell as much as boys' bathrooms to begin with and this is the summer camp of halfbloods. It would have been kept squekey clean.
Also, the kid makes the water wash away the bullies. These experts on Greek mythology wonder who's his daddy...
He's not good at anything but canoeing. Who's his daddy? No idea...
He doesn't have the looks of any of the other campers, even though all the other kids look like each other, and his mother told he looks like his father. Who's his daddy? Blank stare.
He gets in the water and immediately gets better. Huh?
They have to see a glowing trident above the boy's head to get it!
Geesh.

And why the stereotypes? Why keep only some?

"If you're a child of Aphrodite or Demeter, you're probably not a real powerful force."
Yeah... I mean, Aphrodite's and Demeter's kids were really nothing compared to the kinds of... Orpheus and Heracles. Or Perseus Jackson. I mean... they just caused people to fall in love or fear, invented agriculture and stuff... nothing important. Whereas using water as weapon is something really big and mighty and powerful, a true force to consider. Yeah.

"You're probably a child of Hermes. Or maybe even one of the minor gods, like Nemesis, the god of revenge."
So there are children of the lesser gods around, but still Aphrodite's and Demeter's kids are not important?

"Number eight, the silver one, belongs to Artemis," he said. "She vowed to be a maiden forever. So of course, no kids.”
Athena was a maiden Goddess as well. No kids. Nevertheless, she's given them, and plenty of them.
"Annabeth sat at table six with a bunch of serious-looking athletic kids, all with her gray eyes and honey-blond hair."
Yeah... "male logic"?

I mean, if he twists the myths, why not twist properly? I suppose girls are not interesting. Demeter and Hera are the "three big ones" sisters... who cares. They are not interesting.

BTW Rick, goats don't eat metal. They don't eat tin cans nor aluminium cans. It's really stupid to make your satyr pack his backpack full of scrap metal and apples to snack on.
And a 28 year old faun doesn't know more than two songs? Sure.

Then the movie... He beats Athena's daughter, who is more or less a regular camper, the first week on the camp? Poseidon couldn't beat Athena, how would his idiot son won over Athena's daughter in her game? Please.

Golden blonde California Girl? And 12...?

At least the film makers realized how impossible it is for a 12-year-old to do what the book says.

P.S. The second book was not as good as the first one, but still okay.

Helle and Frixos! Not Europe and Cadmus! Now... that is unforgivable... almost got me off reading the book.

Harpies: "plump little hags with pinched faces and talons and feathery wings too small for their bodies" - like cafeteria ladies and dodos.
Oh. Let's use the later misfiguration to describe harpies, after all, they are female.
In reality harpies are the spirits of storm winds and gusts and very beautiful.