Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Titan's Curse

Okay, I'll admit it, I'm hooked. This is a good series. I still don't like it as much as Artemis Fowl, and it doesn't even come close to Harry Potter, but it is good. I'm suddenly very invested in the characters and what's happening to them. And have I mentioned how good Riordan is with Greek mythology? Yeah. And as the characters become more developed and the story careens towards doom, I'm seriously hooked. And I have a different reading list for fall. Sigh. Oh well. I'll be finishing this series no matter what.

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The Titan's Curse opens with Mrs. Jackson driving Percy, Annabeth, and Thalia to a boarding school. Sounds normal enough, but they aren't really there to attend the place. Actually, Grover, their satyr friend, has found two more half-bloods, Bianca and Nico de Angelo, and the trio is there to make sure they all get to Camp Half-blood safely. Of course, one of the teachers is a manticore in disguise so that complicates matters. A battle ensues while the de Angelo siblings watch in utter confusion. Artemis shows up with her Hunters and suddenly Annabeth is lost, going down over the cliff into the sea with the manticore.

Amidst the aftermath of that battle, Bianca joins the Hunters, Nico asks Percy a lot of annoying questions, and Artemis decides she is going off on a hunt alone, a hunt for the monster that will destroy Olympus, which the manticore spoke about before falling off the cliff with Annabeth still attached to him. So the rest of the group heads for Camp Half-blood, the Hunters grumbling about how they hate boys/men (particularly Zoe Nightshade, who took Bianca under her wing) and don't want to travel with them.

At camp, lots of stuff happens, but the biggest thing is that the Oracle gives a prophecy of her own accord. Like, she actually comes down out of the attic of the big house and recites a prophecy, before sitting back down and becoming pretty much dead again. The prophecy reads as follows:

Five shall go west to the goddess in chains,

One shall be lost in the land without rain,

The bane of Olympus shows the trail,

Campers and Hunters combined prevail,

The Titan's curse must one withstand,

And one shall perish by a parent's hand.

After much fighting it is decided who the members of the quest to rescue Artemis and Annabeth will be, and Percy is not among them. Of course he takes matters into his own hands, especially after Nico pleads with him to go watch over his older sister, Bianca. Then Phoebe, a Hunter chosen to go on the quest, falls ill in a cruel prank. Percy still isn't chosen, but he follows the quest group secretly for a time. In D.C. after a lovely battle with the Nemean lion, Zoe and Thalia grudgingly agree that he is the fifth member of the quest, and they move on.

They travel across the U.S. with various battles, a death, and a little bit of godly help along the way. Eventually they arrive in San Francisco, but what happens there is not quite what they expect.

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Annnnnd, as per my rules for no serious spoilers, I'll stop right there. I realize that seems to cut my reviews off short, but rules are rules, and I don't really like giving spoilers.

So this book gets four stars, and I'm going to admit I shed a few tears at the end. Still not the biggest fan of how Riordan writes, but that doesn't matter much to me at this point. I loved this book. Sea of Monsters is my favourite of the three I've read so far, but this one kept up the pace and feel of the other two.