Perseus “Percy” Jackson is about to discover his destiny. The good thing is that he may very well be the son of a god, one of the many offspring produced by the various deities and supernatural creatures of the immortal Greek pantheon. The bad part is that as he comes into his true nature, powerful forces move to prevent him from ever discovering the truth of his origins.
If he survives the initial attacks, he’ll find refuge at Half-Blood Hill, a summer/year-round camp for fellow children of the gods like himself. There, he’ll find friends, teachers, allies, danger and excitement, as he waits to find out who his father was. Hermes? Ares? Dionysus? Or perhaps he’s the child of one of the Big Three – Zeus, Poseidon, or Hades, all of whom swore never to father children again after the disastrous last time that happened.

To make matters worse, a powerful artifact has been stolen, and should it not be recovered soon, those self-same Big Three will go to war amongst themselves, generating a conflict which could lay waste to the world. Suddenly, it’s up to Percy and his friends, one a daughter of Athena, the other an eager young satyr, to travel across the country, sneak into the Underworld, and reclaim the missing item before things get ugly. Of course, whoever took the artifact and framed Percy for it has plenty of minions to make life very interesting along the way. It’ll be a true test of Percy’s heroic potential, and he’ll need all the help he can get. But should he succeed, he’ll be a true hero, even as a deep, dark threat is revealed after centuries of hiding.
The Lightning Thief has all of the classic elements: a magical parentage, an epic quest, a hidden world existing alongside our own, and a trio of teenagers out to save the world. But for all the familiarity the story possesses, it’s fresh and exciting nonetheless. It has all of the style, flair, and excitement of Harry Potter, offering up that same sense of wonder and discovery without being at all derivative or imitative. It’ll be a damn shame if this book gets overlooked amidst the hype surrounding the next Potter book’s release, because The Lightning Thief is just as good, if not better, than The Sorcerer’s Stone. It’s rare that I’ll actually dare compare something to Potter, but this definitely warrants the invocation; once I started reading, I couldn’t stop. I’m eagerly looking forward to future books in this series. Don’t let this one get away.