I’m not a huge fan of Chris Columbus. He tends to dumb down his subject matter alot. So I didn’t have high hopes for Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief at all. And as we watched the movie our low expectations dropped even lower as we watched one of the stupidest movies of all time.

This made me pick up the book because every book I’ve read this touched or created from a Chris Columbus movie is 1000x smarter than his movie. I wasn’t disappointed. In Riordan’s book, Percy Jackson is 13 years old, troubled and in trouble. It gets worse when he finds out he’s a half blood, and even worse when he finds out who his father was. He is sent on a quest to clear his name and nearly doesn’t survive it. It was fun, scary and well written. Compare this with the movie:

Percy Jackson has something crazy happen to him at school once. So 18 year old Percy is taken to half blood camp by his mom (who gets herself kidnapped) after she tells him he’s the son of a god. After finding out he’s the perfect fighter, he and his friends run away to save his mom. But one of his not-friends gives him a map to find some pearls to get out of Hades once they get there.

It just kind of went downhill from there. So read book, skip the awful movie.