I was bored and out of the random impulse of my mind, I surfed wikipedia. Yes, It's full of inaccuracies and stuff like that, but whenever I get bored, I go on there to look for something interesting.

I was reading up on Greek mythology, which is interesting as it is the origin of many story elements that we hold today.

Well one thing led to another as you know how wikipedia and my asymmetric mind works (strangely enough I've tested for ADHD and my teachers once said that I had a strange logica to my thinking even though it might appear random).

Long story short, I saw information about the film adaptation of Percy Jackson series and the book series by Rick Rordan. I saw the movie online (it was a crappy movie, which I keep hearing would be the replacement for Harry potter series, which I really didn't believe). The movie was crappy, but I take chances on books and I thought why not try reading the thing.

Well, I know it is strange for a 25 year old guy to be reading a series of books who's intended audience are 10 years younger (the first novel was written when I was 18, so it's weird).

I enjoyed them all and loved the progression of greek myths. Maybe, it's my classical education in Greek and Latin talking, maybe it's my yearning to find heroic values in literature that bridges the gap between classic and modern, and maybe I am just some weird guy who has weird tastes.

I also know a lot of people with disabilities, me being blind in one eye is one of the reasons (It's a classical tradition too that blindness is the source of true knowledge for good and evil, ask the Goddess Nemesis). Dyslexics and ADHD sufferers are just the tip of the ice berg. The story appealed to me on that basic level as few other fantasy fiction stories do. I wish gay authors can take note of that, hell I might even try to bridge it myself one day if I ever write fantasy fiction.

(Plus, as a Bostonian, I do hold the rivalry card with New Yorkers, but it's more like a sibling rivalry than outright hate. I like the New York accent and the city landmarks. )

As for Harry Potter replacement, I think the books are different in many ways. While Harry Potter series made you believe in magic and the world living parallel to ours, Percy Jackson series is an adventure story that holds more sarcasm and social commentary about the modern world. I think it's also the source material the Rowling and Rordan draws on as well. Rordan's magical world is very flawed with Gods being petty, cruel, and generally assholes in many respects just as the Greek and Roman myths. However, you see in his work the role of progression and the end of the cycles that the Greeks had written into their myths. (I'll leave you guys to find out what I mean, but suffice to say, a son usurping his father like Zeus usurping Kronos, Kronos usurping his dad Ouranos, and ect.) A hero that ends the bloody cycle of power and destruction is something to cheer just as much as a hero who defeats the manifestation of evil itself.

The last thing that appealed to me in the series was the family dynamics, (well when you write about powerful characters like uncles marrying nieces and brother marrying sisters, you're already not following our current morality, but the author only hinted at that aspect). Family is at the heart of the stories, whether it is traditional families or extended families. My favorite line came from the Goddess Hestia about the nature of family. It left a good feeling and Iagree with the author that hope should be kept within the hearth for when we are lost and need a place to seek refuge, there will always be a home somewhere.

We're in a different generation and families are not nuclear two parent households anymore, but they are still family and still people you care about. It doesn't matter if you share one parent or none at all, it is the experiences that make you family and keep you together. True family isn't biological, it is the emotions that you feel for one another.