It has been a 10-book journey with Percy Jackson, the demigods of modern time, and the gods of Olympus. I've been with them the whole way, first as they saved the world from Kronos and then as they defeated Gaea. It has been a long ride, but so much fun. The good thing about it being a 10-book experience is that I feel satiated with the series ending. I don't need another book to add any more to the shape of the characters. This ending feels right and I can let everyone go on to live the rest of their (fictional) lives without intruding further.
The final book in Riordan's second series involving mythological Greek goods puts Roman and Greek demigods on the brink of civil war as Gaea rises to destroy everything. The gods aren't any help as each wars within themselves between their Greek persona and their Roman. As long as the demigods are against each other, Gaea will rise unopposed and win. It's up to two groups of demigods who were able to look past their heritage to come together - to become a family. One team sails to Athens to try and stop Gaea from rising even though it has been prophesied that their blood will aid in her ascension. The other rushes to the front lines of battle at Camp Half Blood, a gigantic statue of Athena in tow, the only thing that can stop war from breaking out. It takes the skills and talents of both Greeks and Romans working together to win the day.
As big as the story is on one level - the world ending, large groups of people going to war, traveling around the world, etc. You're only following a few main characters so you really feel like you're a part of the action. And although I sometimes had trouble remembering who was who as far as back-story went, Riordan does a great job of jogging the reader's memory as he goes along with the story. There wasn't anyone I didn't like as far as the good guys go and they were all very different in personality. I hated the bad guys, cheered for the good, and was properly annoyed by the gods' inability to get themselves together. The action-packed final chapter definitely delivered, and after such a long investment, it was a refreshing change to not be disappointed at the end (see Hunger Games.)
Action-packed as all these books are, there's never really a dull moment in the story. Even when a character is taking a minute to reflect or process some new knowledge, there is so much coming on the horizon, you, the reader, don't really get to take a breath. I like that in a book. I appreciate how hard it really is to come up with so much and not make it feel forced. It doesn't feel forced in this book. Things have to happen fast, time is running out.
This is the longest I've stayed with one character in a series that I can recall. I more often go for the trilogy - keeping it short and sweet, but this has been worth the investment. I know these are YA novels and I know the movies of the first two Percy Jackson books may leave something to be desired, but the books are just great reads overall. They're fun and powerful at the same time, focusing on bigger issues of friendship, finding your place in the world, figuring out who you are as a person and being okay with that person, accepting differences in others, and finding strength when life throws you those crazy curve balls. I would definitely recommend these books to the YA reader's out there, regardless of your actual age. It may take some time to get through them all, but it's worth it.
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man was on the reading list in 12th grade. It is the only book I've ever been assigned to read for school that I couldn't finish. I mean I was such a snob about my reading back then that I scoffed at students who used Cliff's Notes or any other device to cheat through reading the complete book. It never made sense to me to not read the book until old James Joyce came around. I got two-thirds of the way through and just stopped cold turkey, and it showed on my test. My teacher at the time even wrote directly on my test asking if I'd actually finished the book.
To this day I've yet to finish the book or pick up another James Joyce title to try. There are very few books or authors I've tried out and totally disliked right from the start, but he's one of them.
Thankfully, I've found another Joyce to read that is James' complete opposite. These books are remarkably creative with the most beautiful illustrations. The stories are unique, even taking popular tales and putting a new spin on them to appeal to a wider audience. It took having kids (and a few animated movies) to fully discover this author, but I've managed to find a readable Joyce, and his name is William.
Most widely known are William Joyce's Guardians series which follows the adventures of Santa, the Tooth Fairy, the Man in the Moon, Jack Frost, and the Easter Bunny and Epic. Both were made into movies. Guardians is actually really good. If my daughter wasn't so afraid of the bad guy, Pitch, this movie would be a staple of our house. Epic is okay. But, it's the books for the younger kids that really just blow me away. My daughter got two of them for the holidays this year and we've loved reading both; A Day with Wilbur Robinson (which is also a movie that's pretty good now that I think of it) and A Bean, A Stalk, and A Boy Named Jack. They are both imaginative and adventurous and hopefully inspiring to my amazing four-year-old who is beginning to pretend more and more as she plays.
William Joyce makes the unusual exciting and weaves in such simple moral lessons like the importance of family, being careful what you wish for, the value of an individual, the importance of laughter, and realizing that even big problems can have a simple answer. These are the types of stories I hope stay with my kids as they grow up and move away from picture books to the more involved chapter books. While I can't wait to watch then discover Harry Potter, His Dark Materials, A Wrinkle in Time, etc. I feel like these books are where all that creative imagination that you can pull from a book is starting. I feel honored to be watching this process really begin with my daughter and can't wait for my son to be old enough to experience this same thing too.
Another William Joyce book that I really love that my family is still getting into is The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore. I think it might also be a short film, but the book is such a great story about the value of your own life as you live it, the things you accomplish for yourself, and the people you care about. It's about your personal story and how much it really matters. And, there are flying books!
I feel like we're just scratching the surface of the large library of books William has penned and I'm looking forward to reading more as my kids grow. I'm just thankful there's a Joyce out there writing that I can enjoy since my first encounter with a literary Joyce was so totally disappointing.
It takes 300 pages for something to happen in this book and where it ends up is so far from where you think it's going, that I'm not sure the trip is worth it. I'm also not sure the person who wrote the synopsis of the book actually read it.
I picked up this book because it is set in Boston, my favorite town, and it's a period piece, taking place on the eve of U.S. involvement in WWI. It features the Allston Family who is recovering from the tragedy of losing two of its members on the Titanic. The synopsis of the book cites "mysterious circumstances" and a "harrowing mystery" to be solved as the family copes with their loss, or at least that's what I thought and what intrigued me about the book. Taking the position of the survivors who were left ashore while family members drowned on the Titanic is a unique perspective that I wanted to read about, but instead I was given Harlan, a rule-breaking college kid with a gambling problem and Sybil, a young woman who discovers through the use of opium that she has a very special, very depressing gift. Both characters are affected by the loss of their family members (a sister and their mom,) but what takes main stage is coping with these other issues. Must be what the synopsis meant by "mystery."
Even thinking about the flow of the book now, I'm confused. The book jumps between the present (1915,) the day the Titanic sank, and 1868 where you learn more about the father in the family. Initially, it made sense to pair the present in the book with scenes from the Titanic, but then things shifted and you see a connection between the present and the father's flashback. There's only a tiny point where the three story lines connect in any way and it was anticlimactic. It would have been a more compelling story without the flashes back to the Titanic, if you ask me. The story would have felt more cohesive to shift the focus on the "gift" Sybil discovers and how it affects her life and the lives of her family. The conclusions she reaches about destiny and fate as a result of coping with her "gift" are the most interesting piece of the entire story, but they get tangled up with the reader's incorrect expectations that this is a book about the aftermath of the Titanic.
Howe likes to infuse her stories with a lot of history and a little bit of the fantastical and I think she got it right with her previous book, but this one definitely fell short.
This is a modern-day adventure story, what Indiana Jones might have gone through if the Internet and cell phones existed in the 1940's. Instead of dark caves with lots of skulls and scurrying animals, the characters here have Google and CG as their tools to solve the great mystery of a secretive society.
Everything about this book is quirky. Even the realistic impression of the crazy stuff going on at Google HQ is odd (and probably not that far from reality.) Clay is an out-of-work marketing person whose most recent job at a start-up that went under has left him a little disillusioned, so he takes the night shift at a unique 24-hour bookstore run my Penumbra. It's not your typical bookstore. There are only a few shelves in the front that carry modern-day books for sale. The rest of the store is devoted to a collection of old books all written in code. The regulars at the store don't buy anything, just borrow these old books, one at a time. Clay must track the activity of these regulars in great detail. He has no idea why or what's going on and probably would have stayed only slightly curious if not for a girl. She works for Google and she's extremely curious about everything and very persuasive.
So, the adventure begins to discover what these coded books are for, why they must be read in a certain order, who Penumbra really works for, and what the strange symbol on the door really means. In order to figure things out, Clay enlists a special effect wiz with a preference for building models out of real materials and his best friend who happens to own a company that creates anatomically correct body parts digitally. He also takes advantage of some pretty serious equipment and some serious brain power at Google. I won't give anything away, but even the cause for the adventure is quirky - it's all about a specific font with a cameo plot line about a fantasy writer (think dragons and magic.)
A quick and light read, this was a great departure for me from all the fantastical books I've been reading lately. It took place in today's world but was still a little mystic and exciting. It was a real adventure, one that anybody with the right resources and the right mystery to solve could go on today. The focus was on the quest itself with a little bit here and there about the characters so you were easily kept in the moment and not bogged down with too many flashbacks and internal monologues. I had fun reading this book and definitely feel like it has mass appeal potential.
