Reading Riordan

Speaking of which, Percy begins to wonder, given the existence of gods and magic and stuff, if bringing his mom back from the Underworld is possible. Chiron neatly sidesteps the issue and continues the tour, including "the archery range, the canoeing lake, the stables, [...] the javelin range, the sing-along amphitheater, and the arena where Chiron said they held sword and spear fights." Wow, this really is taking me back!

Finally we see the cabins, all of which look very different, reflecting which god they represent. They're surrounding a firepit where "a girl about nine years old was tending the flames, poking the coals with a stick." I mention this only because I already know she's going to be important at like, the very end of the series.

Some of the cabins are unused. Included is Cabin Three, which is made from "stone studded with pieces of seashell and coral, as if the slabs had been hewn straight from the bottom of the ocean floor" and has a "salty scent[...]like the wind on the shore at Montauk." Percy seems drawn to it, but thinks that it looks "sad and lonely."

Instead, Percy is directed to Cabin Eleven.

Out of all the cabins, eleven looked the most like a regular old summer camp cabin, with the emphasis on old. The threshold was worn down, the brown paint peeling. Over the doorway was one of those doctor's symbols, a winged pole with two snakes wrapped around it. What did they call it...? A caduceus.

Inside, it was packed with people, both boys and girls, way more than the number of bunk beds. Sleeping bags were spread all over on the floor. It looked like a gym where the Red Cross had set up an evacuation center.

Annabeth has taken over the tour at this point, and explains that Percy is "Undetermined." This annoys most of the Hermes Cabin kids, except for their head counselor, Luke.

He was tall and muscular, with shortcropped sandy hair and a friendly smile. He wore an orange tank top, cutoffs, sandals, and a leather necklace with five different-colored clay beads. The only thing unsettling about his appearance was a thick white scar that ran from just beneath his right eye to his jaw, like an old knife slash.

"This is Luke," Annabeth said, and her voice sounded different somehow. I glanced over and could've sworn she was blushing.

Luke explains that since Hermes is the god of travelers, newcomers are housed there until they get "determined" for another cabin. It's also made clear that Percy shouldn't count on that happening, which is why Hermes Cabin is so crowded.

At this point, Percy has done something to tick off Annabeth and gets dragged away.

Annabeth said, "Jackson, you have to do better than that."

"What?"

She rolled her eyes and mumbled under her breath, "I can't believe I thought you were the one."

"What's your problem?" I was getting angry now. "All I know is, I kill some bull guy—"

"Don't talk like that!" Annabeth told me. "You know how many kids at this camp wish they'd had your chance?"

"To get killed?"

"To fight the Minotaur! What do you think we train for?"

She also explains that monsters regenerate after a while, much like in video games, which is why the Minotaur showed up despite having been killed by Theseus. I'm still a little confused about Mrs. Dodds, though. She was a Fury, and aren't those more like gods than monsters? They're scary, but the Greeks did worship them. The Eumenides ends with them becoming patrons of Athens in exchange for leaving Orestes alone. Heck, if they could be temporarily killed, why didn't Orestes just try stabbing them?

Percy asks, reasonably, why everyone is jammed in Hermes Cabin instead of using the empty ones. And that's when Annabeth explains that everyone at the camp is a demigod, and that your cabin is based on who your divine parent is.

Okay, but you could still put the Undetermined girls into Artemis' cabin, since it's not being used. She's the protector of girls, so it fits as well as Hermes cabin. I'd say put the boys in Apollo's cabin, but I imagine it's crowded enough as it is.

"[Percy's dyslexia is] because your mind is hardwired for ancient Greek. And the ADHD—you're impulsive, can't sit still in the classroom. That's your battlefield reflexes. In a real fight, they'd keep you alive. As for the attention problems, that's because you see too much, Percy, not too little. Your senses are better than a regular mortal's. Of course the teachers want you medicated. Most of them are monsters. They don't want you seeing them for what they are."

Okay, let's break all that down.

First of all, I know that these books were originally created because Riordan's own son struggled with ADHD and dyslexia. I've also seen that gifset of the adorable little girl thanking him for writing a character whom she can relate to. All that being said...I dunno. "People with certain medical conditions are magic" seems kinda iffy to me. And "anyone who wants to medicate you is inhuman and wants you dead" seems really iffy, even as someone who leans toward medical skepticism.

(Also, this seems like a weird message for Riordan's son. Are you accusing Mrs. Riordan of something, Rick?)

Finally, "your brain is hardwired for ancient Greek" just seems silly. I'm half-Acadian, that doesn't make my brain hardwired to instantly read French. Though I suppose it makes some sense if you imagine the gods as like, physical personifications of mythology itself, in which case they would be embodiments of human thought—specifically, thoughts that were originally in an ancient Greek language. (Though probably Mycenaean Greek instead of the Classical version that the Greek myths were mostly written in.)

I'm definitely thinking about this more than Riordan did.

Anyway, then some kids from Ares' Cabin show up. They'll be our Slytherins for this book.

I don't mean in the sense of being clever and ambitious like Slytherins are supposed to be; more in the sense of being designated jerks, like literally every Slytherin character in Harry Potter. Actually, I've seen some people argue that Percy would be a Slytherin, which is an interesting lens to view the rest of the story through.

Our Malfoy analogue is named Clarisse, with three of her half-sisters filling in for Crabbe and Goyle.

Hmm. Along with Nancy Bobofit, it's odd that this book has so many female bullies in contrast to its male protagonist.

"Percy Jackson," Annabeth said, "meet Clarisse, Daughter of Ares."

I blinked. "Like...the war god?"

Clarisse sneered. "You got a problem with that?"

"No," I said, recovering my wits. "It explains the bad smell."

They decide to give Percy a swirly, and honestly? I'm kind of on their side. He started it.

So Clarisse drags Percy to the toilet and tries to force his head in. Obviously, he is opposed to this idea, and:

I felt a tug in the pit of my stomach. I heard the plumbing rumble, the pipes shudder. Clarisse's grip on my hair loosened. Water shot out of the toilet, making an arc straight over my head, and the next thing I knew, I was sprawled on the bathroom tiles with Clarisse screaming behind me.

[...]

She struggled, gasping, and her friends started coming toward her. But then the other toilets exploded, too, and six more streams of toilet water blasted them back. The showers acted up, too, and together all the fixtures sprayed the camouflage girls right out of the bathroom, spinning them around like pieces of garbage being washed away.

This is made even weirder because all the water avoided Percy; he's standing in the one dry spot of the bathroom. Annabeth is also soaked, but seems surprisingly okay with this. If anything, this seems to have unlocked Friendship Level 2.

Grover, who is honestly weepier about this than Percy, advises him to drink something which looks like apple juice but tastes like “my mom's homemade blue chocolate-chip cookies, buttery and hot, with the chips still melting.” It makes him feel a lot better, though Grover implies that the stuff would kill him and possibly Percy if either of them drank too much. 

Grover then leads Percy to the back of the house, and we get our first real glimpse of Camp Half-Blood:

Between here and there, I simply couldn't process everything I was seeing. The landscape was dotted with buildings that looked like ancient Greek architecture—an open-air pavilion, an amphitheater, a circular arena—except that they all looked brand new, their white marble columns sparkling in the sun. In a nearby sandpit, a dozen high school-age kids and satyrs played volleyball. Canoes glided across a small lake. Kids in bright orange T-shirts like Grover's were chasing each other around a cluster of cabins nestled in the woods. Some shot targets at an archery range. Others rode horses down a wooded trail, and, unless I was hallucinating, some of their horses had wings.

At the end of the porch, Percy sees The Girl and a man who “looked like a cherub who'd turned middle-aged in a trailer park.” (I must admit, I do like that description.) They are apparently Annabeth and Mr. D.

Percy is surprised to also see Mr. Brunner, who it turns out is actually named “Chiron.”

“Scale? Never heard of it.” —Some ancient Greek artist

"Ah, good, Percy," he said. "Now we have four for pinochle."

He offered me a chair to the right of Mr. D, who looked at me with bloodshot eyes and heaved a great sigh. "Oh, I suppose I must say it. Welcome to Camp Half-Blood. There. Now, don't expect me to be glad to see you."

[...]

She glanced at the minotaur horn in my hands, then back at me. I imagined she was going to say, You killed a minotaur! or Wow, you're so awesome! or something like that. Instead she said, "You drool when you sleep." Then she sprinted off down the lawn, her blond hair flying behind her.

You know, Hogwarts has a much nicer welcoming ceremony. There’s a feast and everything. 

(Also, it should be “blonde,” with an “e.” Just saying.)

Mr. Brunner says that he’s glad that Percy didn’t get horribly killed, as that would have made his tenure at Yancy Academy “a waste of time.” (See, he clearly had no interest in the other students.) Apparently Grover was planted at the school to look out for future protagonists, and when Chiron heard about Percy he murdered the previous Latin teacher and took a job at the school in order to watch him. 

Percy finally cuts to the chase and asks what the heck is going on, and Chiron reveals that the Greek gods are real.

Oh, and Mr. D is one. Specifically Dionysus, god of wine, though he doesn’t like going by that because “names are powerful things” and I still don’t understand why we’re doing this bit. As far as I know, the ancient Greeks weren’t scared of using Dionysus’ name, and it apparently doesn’t hurt him or anything, so...? The point is, Zeus is mad at him, so now he has to spend the next century running a summer camp and getting no rum for his rum and Coke. 

So, let’s talk about Dionysus for a minute. 

“No, I’ve never actually seen a leopard. Why?” —Some ancient Greek artist

He’s actually a pretty complex character. If you don’t want to watch this very interesting 17-minute video, we can summarize by saying that he originally seems to have been a scary god of madness, but over time he developed into a younger, friendlier god with some scary stories still attached to him. The thing is, Mr. D doesn’t fit either of those portrayals very well. I think Riordan was going for the creepy original version (there’s a whole paragraph describing some of his scary stories), but he comes off more grumpy than terrifying. I guess the lack of booze is making him irritable. 

He fits the role of grouchy camp counselor pretty well, though I’m not sure why he hates Percy so much in particular. Unless Riordan just needed a Snape for his Harry Potter bingo card.

"If you were a god, how would you like being called a myth, an old story to explain lightning? What if I told you, Perseus Jackson, that someday people would call you a myth, just created to explain how little boys can get over losing their mothers?"

No, Chiron, he was created to encourage little boys with learning disabilities. Get your facts straight. 

First off: kudos on Percy’s first name, I like that detail. Secondly, I have to question: why don’t people believe in the Greek gods anymore? Mr. D says that Percy will be incinerated if he refuses to, but by that logic, why isn’t Zeus hurling lightning at people until they burn up some BBQ for him? How’d y’all let Christianity take over your cosmic empire?

"Well, now," Chiron said. "God—capital G, God. That's a different matter altogether. We shan't deal with the metaphysical."

Hmm. 

He kicked your ass, didn’t He?

Nah. He sent His kid to do it. 

The adults are still being vague, expecting Sally to have explained things a bit more. Eventually Mr. D leaves with Grover, saying that they need to discuss “[his] less-than-perfect performance on this assignment." Percy asks Chiron a few more questions, and learns that the “Greek” gods have apparently moved Mount Olympus to America.

“What you call 'Western civilization.' Do you think it's just an abstract concept? No, it's a living force. A collective consciousness that has burned bright for thousands of years. The gods are part of it. You might even say they are the source of it, or at least, they are tied so tightly to it that they couldn't possibly fade, not unless all of Western civilization were obliterated. [...] America is now the heart of the flame. It is the great power of the West. And so Olympus is here. And we are here."

*rubs temple* Do I want to try and unpack this? ‘Cause there’s so much to go over. 

Like: what counts as "Western civilization," at a time when globalization is spreading it to non-Western countries? Or conversely, when the West takes on non-Western traits? Are the gods only tied to Greek influences, or influences from the new countries that they come to? If they’re the embodiments of Western civilization, what does it mean that said civilization has been primarily defined by Christianity for so long, and follow up, does that mean Christianity dying in Western countries, ironically, hurts them? 

Don’t get me wrong, having characters as the personifications of cultural traits is an interesting concept. I just don’t think that Riordan plans to go into that as much as he should.

And heck, I can imagine them moving without making it all philosophical. Look at Greece’s economy. The Olympians wouldn’t be the only ones emigrating.

So Percy is kind of freaked out about being included in this “physical embodiment of Western civilization” thing, and finally asks “Who...who am I?" Chiron admits that he doesn’t know, but that in the meantime, he'll help him get settled into camp and also reveal that he’s a centaur.

I mean, the next chapter confirms that Percy knows the myths about Chiron, so he shouldn’t really be surprised.

All I could think to say was, "So, you and my mom...know each other?" Graver's eyes flitted to the rearview mirror, though there were no cars behind us. "Not exactly," he said. "I mean, we've never met in person. But she knew I was watching you." "Watching me?" "Keeping tabs on you. Making sure you were okay. But I wasn't faking being your friend," he added hastily. "I am your friend."

You sure, ‘cause Percy totally bailed on you back at the bus station. You can probably do better, Grover.

Percy says that Grover is half “donkey,” which he takes as a huge insult. He is a satyr, thank you very much, and not one of those no-good, disgusting onocentaurs. So let’s talk about satyrs. 

Did you know that satyrs were originally depicted as part-horse, not goat? And not even really half-horse; they had tails and equine ears, as well as generally ugly faces, but otherwise looked remarkably human. 

They were also a fountain for dick jokes.

Yeah, good luck finding art from the Archaic or Classical Periods that doesn’t depict them with an erection. They were often used to show a dark or humorous side of human sexuality, given their tendency to screw any nymph, human or animal that they could find. (No, of course they didn’t worry about consent, what kind of mythology do you think you’re reading?) Beyond that they may or may not have been immortal, but they were always semi-divine and thus potentially sources of arcane wisdom.

Now Pan, whom I know we learn more about later in this book, was half-goat, as were the Panes, which basically reimagined Pan as a species; sometimes they sort of replaced the original Pan, sometimes they were his sons. Panes were sometimes conflated with satyrs, but the general trend was actually to make satyrs more humanlike and downplay and the horse aspects. See, for example, the Pouring Satyr by Praxiteles, which you wouldn’t even realize is a satyr if it wasn’t right there in the title:

Now, like Pan/the Panes, Romans fauns were always depicted as half-goat, and like satyrs, they were minor nature spirits; unlike either, they were shy, gentle and not particularly prone to sexual depravity. Nevertheless, when the Romans decided to just copy all of Greek mythology on top of their pre-existing religion, it made sense to take Pan/the Panes and the satyrs, which were already loosely connected to each other, and fuse them with the fauns. This put an end to the semi-equine and fully humanoid satyrs and gave us half-goat satyr/fauns that were sexually lascivious but not particularly wise; it’s only in Renaissance and later works that they sometimes went back to the personality that fauns had before Hellenization.    

Which brings us back to Grover. He’s much more an early Roman “faun” than an ancient Greek “satyr,” both in appearance and personality. I mean, I can’t completely fault Riordan for this—he’s just doing what every writer has done since Lucretius first described “goat-legged” satyrs in the first century BCE. But still, it would have been nice if he’d gone the extra mile in terms of mythological accuracy, especially since, according to a brief trip to the Riordan Wiki, he depicts “fauns” as somehow being different. As I noted before, in this book you can really tell that he wasn’t planning to depict Roman mythology as a semi-separate thing later on.

Anyway, that’s kind of a criticism, but mostly I just wanted to talk about it because I find it interesting. Back to the story. 

"The less you knew, the fewer monsters you'd attract," Grover said, like that should be perfectly obvious. "We put Mist over the humans' eyes. We hoped you'd think the Kindly One was a hallucination. But it was no good. You started to realize who you are."

So this is all a lot to take in—mythical creatures, illogical attempts to justify the masquerade, racism against onocentaurs going unchallenged. There’s also something chasing them, and Sally says that they don’t have time to explain everything now because we’re about to have a fight scene.

"Safety from what? Who's after me?" "Oh, nobody much," Grover said, obviously still miffed about the donkey comment. "Just the Lord of the Dead and a few of his blood-thirstiest minions."

Also:

"Those weren't old ladies," Grover said. "Those were the Fates. Do you know what it means—the fact they appeared in front of you? They only do that when you're about to...when someone's about to die." "Whoa. You said 'you.'" "No I didn't. I said 'someone.'" "You meant 'you.' As in me." "I meant you, like 'someone.' Not you, you."

But...Percy hasn’t died, and spoiler alert, he doesn’t here or at any other point in this book. He felt feverish, but that hasn’t been mentioned since chapter two, so it’s not like he’s slowly wasting away or something. Did the Fates actually do anything? Did that scene have a point other than vague foreshadowing and Riordan wanting to shove in every mythological reference possible?

Don’t complain, kid.

Percy, to his credit, was going to ask follow-up questions, specifically about Mr. Brunner and the sword-pen, when the car is suddenly struck by lightning and crashes. And then the Minotaur shows up.

Well, that escalated quickly.

He’s “seven feet tall, easy,” with “arms and legs like something from the cover of Muscle Man magazine,” with a bull’s head and “enormous black-and-white horns with points you just couldn't get from an electric sharpener.” Unlike the above image, though, he is clad in "bright white Fruit of the Looms,” which is honestly a very amusing image.

"Pasiphae's son," my mother said. "I wish I'd known how badly they want to kill you." "But he's the Min—" "Don't say his name," she warned. "Names have power."

...What kind of power?

No really, I want to know. ‘Cause okay—the ancient Greeks did sort of have a thing like this, like how they called the Furies "the Kindly Ones” to avoid offending or summoning them. But the Minotaur is already coming to kill you. Will this somehow keep him from noticing you or something?

And look, I’m sorry, but this just feels a bit similar to Harry’s Potter’s shtick where people are afraid to say Voldemort’s name for poorly defined reasons. 

Also, according to some sources, “Minotaur” was just a nickname/title anyway, and his actual name was Asterion. 

So Grover is unconscious and moaning about food because, I dunno, funny? Percy and Sally try to carry him over a nearby hill to the Mysterious Summer Camp that we learned about in the last chapter. Sally wants Percy to go alone, but he refuses unless she comes. The Minotaur, meanwhile, is searching the wreckage of the car.

"His sight and hearing are terrible," she said. "He goes by smell. But he'll figure out where we are soon enough." As if on cue, the bull-man bellowed in rage. He picked up Gabe's Camaro by the torn roof, the chassis creaking and groaning. He raised the car over his head and threw it down the road. It slammed into the wet asphalt and skidded in a shower of sparks for about half a mile before coming to a stop. The gas tank exploded. Not a scratch, I remembered Gabe saying. Oops.

Sally advises him how to duck out of the way when the Minotaur charges. Percy wonders how she knows all this stuff; she says that she’s “been worried about an attack for a long time,” which doesn’t really answer the question. Maybe she researched real bulls, but this thing is half human, so I’m not sure how reliable that information is. And does she have other contingency plans? What would she do if a chimera attacked? Asking for chapter 13. 

The Minotaur finally smells them, charges, and they separate. Percy manages to dodge, but then it attacks Sally, who’s reached the top of the hill with a piece of dead weight Grover. Apparently she's magically incapable of going past the tree on the crest, a fact which she semi-hid so that Percy would come along. Also remember this tree because it’s a named character later.

Then, with an angry roar, the monster closed his fists around my mother's neck, and she dissolved before my eyes, melting into light, a shimmering golden form, as if she were a holographic projection. A blinding flash, and she was simply...gone.

"No!”

So here’s the thing. For the next 191 pages, Percy is under the impression that his mother is dead, which...confuses me. If the Minotaur killed her, I’d expect it to be less “pretty golden light show” and more “externalization of previously internal organs.” I guess he’s never seen magical teleportation before, but it just strikes me as odd that neither he nor anyone else ever considers that she might be alive. It goes on for so long that I eventually accepted that fine, I guess she is dead...at which point we learn that she’s not. I dunno, it just bugged me. 

So anyway, Sally has, shall we say, “passed on” and Percy is understandably upset.

Anger replaced my fear. Newfound strength burned in my limbs—the same rush of energy I'd gotten when Mrs. Dodds grew talons. The bull-man bore down on Grover, who lay helpless in the grass. The monster hunched over, snuffling my best friend, as if he were about to lift Grover up and make him dissolve too. I couldn't allow that. I stripped off my red rain jacket.

I had an idea—a stupid idea, but better than no idea at all. I put my back to the big pine tree and waved my red jacket in front of the bull-man, thinking I'd jump out of the way at the last moment. But it didn't happen like that.

Instead, to avoid being grabbed, Percy "leaped straight up, kicking off from the creature's head, using it as a springboard, turning in midair, and landing on his neck,” which is really cool and also something that you need gymnastics training to do in real life. Remembering his mother’s “death” also gives him enough rage to break off one of the Minotaur’s horns, which should also be impossible for a twelve-year-old or any human to do, but I guess we can add “super strength” to Percy’s list of powers. Then he stabs the Minotaur with its own horn, and it “disintegrate[s]—not like my mother, in a flash of golden light, but like crumbling sand, blown away in chunks by the wind, the same way Mrs. Dodds had burst apart.”

Gotta say, these monsters seem kind of weak. Both of them have died in one hit.

Percy is shaky, grieving and just really not enjoying this vacation as much as he thought he would. Still, he manages to grab Grover and drag him past the magic tree and down into the valley, where the two collapse onto the porch of a farmhouse. He passes out just as “a familiar-looking bearded man and a pretty girl" appear over him. The girl announces that "He's the one. He must be" while the man says to shut up until Percy is actually unconscious.

"Do you really think you can still hide the fact that mythology is real?” the girl presumably asks as soon as Percy blacks out.

"NO BUT WE’RE SAVING THE INFO-DUMPS FOR NEXT CHAPTER, ANNABETH!”