I’m back with my re-read of the Percy Jackson series! According to Goodreads, I’ve actually read all five books in the Percy Jackson and the Olympian series, but I’m enjoying the re-read so I’ll probably just continue on.

This second book in the series starts with Percy having a pretty good year. Sure, he doesn’t have any friends because he sticks up for Tyson, the weird homeless kid at school, but he’s managed to make it through a whole year without any monsters coming for him. Well, almost a whole year. As school draws to an end, monsters come, Annabeth has to save him again, and Percy returns to Camp Half-Blood to find everything changed and all he holds dear threatened.

To save the camp, Percy, Annabeth, and Tyson must sneak out of camp to save Grover and get the golden fleece which will save Thalia’s tree (and the camp).

Unlike the first book, Percy Jackson and the Sea of Monsters dives into the quest almost immediately. After all, Percy already knows who he is and we already know about Camp Half-Blood. The adventure is fast and this book felt like it was shorter than the previous one, since it was comparatively straightforward.

I appreciated the fact that the Kronos story moved forward a good bit here. The main quest is tied to it and you get characters from book one (like Luke) appearing again. The overarching plot is clearly not an afterthought, but you can also enjoy the main quest of the book as an adventure without feeling too bogged down by the Kronos storyline.

Speaking of Luke, I liked that Hermes appeared in this book! We didn’t really see too much of Luke’s character development here, but Hermes does add some depth and rationality to Luke’s actions and I’m hoping that this will pay off in a later book.

While I have an ever-increasing number of books on my TBR list, I think I’ll be making time to re-read this. In fact, I think I may try to fit in more re-reads next year: it’s always fun to pay old favourite worlds a visit.

Featured Image: Photo from Canva Media Library