Monday, March 29, 2010

Of Half Bloods and Gods

Guess what guess what guess what guess what? I finished listening to The Sea of Monsters by Rick Riordan today!

It is the second in Riordan's Percy Jackson and the Olympians series. I finished the first one about a month ago, and was very happy to get ahold of this one. And now I can't wait to get ahold of the next one!

In this book the ancient Greek gods are still alive and thriving. (Of course, as far as us Pagans are concerned, they're still alive and thriving anyways...but that's beside the point here.) And as usual, they're having kids by mortals.

These kids are called half bloods, and they usually have ADHD and dyslexia. In fact, if you find an ADHD kid, the chances are that one of their parents isn't human.

These half bloods are in an interesting situation. They can pass as human, and in fact grow up with their human parent, but their lives are also influenced by the gods and the monsters that inevitably seek them out.

What's really fun is that when half bloods are attacked by monsters, regular humans don't see exactly what's going on -- there's a kind of mist that prevents them from seeing that it's a mythological creature that's wreaking havoc, and it seems that the half blood being targeted by the monster tends to get blamed. This somewhat reminds me of J. K. Rowling's and Eoin Colfer's books, where several characters comment that it's amazing the lengths normal people will go to to explain away simple magical phenomena as complex non-magical phenomena.

I know I'm not saying much about the plot. The truth is, I'm not sure what to say without giving anything away. If I do figure out what to say I'll try to post about it.

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