Riordan, Rick : Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief

Percy Jackson is about to be kicked out of boarding school...again. And that's the least of his troubles. Lately, mythological monsters and the gods of Mount Olympus seem to be walking straight out of the pages of Percy's Greek mythology textbook and into his life. And worse, he's angered a few of them. Zeus's master lightning bolt has been stolen, and Percy is the prime suspect.
**Spoiler Alert Maybe**
Now Percy and his friends have just ten days to find and return Zeus's stolen property and bring peace to a warring Mount Olympus. But to succeed on his quest, Percy will have to do more than catch the true thief: he must come to terms with the father who abandoned him; solve the riddle of the Oracle, which warns him of betrayal by a friend; and unravel a treachery more powerful than the gods themselves.

The Lightening Thief is the first in a book book epic fantasy series by Rick Riordan. This book has recently became a movie. I watched the movie before I read the book and that was a bad idea for me at least. The movie completely sucked compared to the book as it always seems to happen. By watching the movie before reading the book I didnt get to imagine the characters how I wanted to imagine them. I had already had the picture of them from the movie in my mind. In my opinion the characters in the movie didnt resemble the characters in the book at all.
Once I got used to how dramatically different this book was from movie, I found that I enjoyed it. It was sorta like harry Potter meets Wizard of Oz without the wands or munchkins. You had Grover the Goat/Satyr, Annabeth daughter of Athena, and Percy daughter of Posiedan. They were on a quest and then he meet with the gods at the end. There was a lot of fighting and running and screaming. I also didnt like how they believed the only way to get to heaven is by doing good deeds. I know that is most certatinly not true. All in all Riordan did an excellent job with description and action. This book may not be suitable for kids under 13 due to the graphic details of the underworld. I cant say that I didnt enjoy the book because I honestly did. Lets just say that I probably wont be reading the second book until a little ways down the line. It started out in full force of action instead of slowly adding it in.

Length: 375 pages
Source: Wal-Mart
Similar Books: The set up is similar to Harry Potter?
Other books I've read by this author: none