The Lightning Thief (Percy Jackson and the Olympians #1) by Rick Riordan

Gosh dang! Where to start!

Synopsis from goodreads.com:

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’ master lightning bolt has been stolen, and Percy is the prime suspect.

Now Percy and his friends have just ten days to find and return Zeus’ 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.

My thoughts:           

I made the fatal mistake of seeing the movie adaptation of this book before reading it! Hence I roughly knew what was going to go down and kept trying to place the parts of the movie into the book. The movie was good, the book was better, but I knew too much so it didn’t really pull me in at first.  Luckily I know nothing of the other four in the series and don’t intent to find out until I’m reading them. Also seeing the movie first, I had figured the main character to be around fifteen/ sixteen (forgive me it has been a couple of years since I’ve seen the film) and in the book he is only twelve. I found Percy being only twelve and doing the things he was doing a bit hard to swallow, I had to keep reminding myself Harry was only eleven at the beginning of his adventures. I had to get my head in the right mind space to enjoy this book, I struggled but by the end it had got me and I will go on to read the next book. So while seeing the movie made this book less impressive, it did introduce me to the series and that’s a good thing.

I would recommend this book to a younger audience and those still in touch with their inner child. While I rate this book a three I think I could have been a four or five if I hadn’t seen the darn movie.

Most of the time if I see a movie I like the look of and see that’s it’s based on a book, I read the book, that’s only fair to the original story and that’s how I found Lee Child and Jack Reacher (now there’s a movie that DID NOT live up to its book) I read all the twilights before I saw the movies etc etc. In fact bar the Harry Potter series this is the only time I saw the movie first, I watched all the Potter movies before I opened the first book, but they were so good that the movies and the books stand up as awesome on their own. Never again my friends will I watch the movie first, always always read the book first.