“The Sea of Monsters” by Rick Riordan

Finally got to the next installment in the Percy Jackson series, the second book, always interesting to see what authors do with these. Honestly this book was just as good as I remembered it from when I was younger. It doesn’t so much build on The Lightning Thief as it just continues the story. Which is really all that I was looking for to be honest. Too deep into the Greek myths and it gets to be a bit too much, whereas the real draw is Percy’s narration and the witty jokes sprinkled in throughout. The Sea of Monsters keeps the same sense of humor while sending your favorite characters off on another adventure.

The plot centers around Percy trying to rescue his friend Grover who has gotten himself kidnapped by a cyclops who wants to marry him. Meanwhile the tree protecting Half Blood Camp has been infected and is slowly dying, so he decides to kill two birds with one stone and rescue Grover while stealing a magical healing fleece from the cyclops that kidnapped him.

The best addition to this story is Percy’s new half-brother Tyson. He’s a baby cyclops who Percy befriends while he is living on the streets of New York City. Tyson adds more humor to the mix for sure, but also adds an extra dimension to Percy’s relationship with the gods and his father specifically. He has mixed feelings about his brother, the other campers make fun of him for being a monster and specifically Percy’s best friend Annabeth has a grudge against cyclops. But of course he learns to love and appreciate his brother.

The book also steadily pushes the overarching plot of the series, revealing that Percy is possibly the subject of a prophecy about a certain hero who could either save Western civilization or bring it crashing down. Not much is revealed, other than a couple more details, but the end is where things begin to get going more intensely. Another half blood is revealed to possibly be the subject of the prophesy as well. It is a pretty good cliffhanger for the next book of the series.

Onwards to the third installment, The Titan’s Curse! Honestly I am having a lot of fun with this, it is nice to be reading something light for once.