In between recovery and my excitement for Christmas that has been fully restored, I managed to finish the second book in Rick Riordan's Percy Jackson and the Olympians series yesterday: Percy Jackson and the Sea of Monsters. Following another of Percy's quests, this book starts with a normal year Percy has been having before learning that Camp Half Blood is under attack due to the poisoning of Thalia's tree.
Despite the fact that he is prohibited to search for a cure by Tantalus, the new activities director replacing Chiron, Percy still goes. Along with Annabeth and his cylcops half-brother Tyson, Percy dives into a journey of finding the Fleece and saving Grover's life.
Disclaimer: If you haven't read the first book yet, please don't scroll down and ruin your reading experience. Click here to read my review of Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief instead.
Again, rereading this book proved to be a good move since I had forgotten almost everything about the story. Percy was still a fun narrator to go through this journey with, and Annabeth was still as badass as she had been in book one.
While I liked learning about new aspects and monsters in Greek mythology through this book, it's hard to sympathize with Percy when he never learned from his past mistakes. It was clear as a day that he attracted monsters like a moth to the flame, and when it came to visiting new places, his luck was quite bad (remember Aunty Em or the Vegas place?). He even claimed at one point that he had gone through places that were inviting on the surface but were bad inside, so why the repetition? To walk into an obvious trap voluntarily seemed to me far too careless, while to go out without a scratch every time he faced a monster seemed to me far too implausible.
Nevertheless, I still liked this book particularly the ending, though I didn't enjoy it as much as I did the first one. Don't get me wrong, it was still a fun good book, but I just didn't feel the pull to read it as fast.
Actual rating: 3★
