Lightning Thief (Percy Jackson and the Olympians #1)

Author: Rick Riordan
Goodreads rating: 4.17
Pages: 377
Format: Audiobook

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.

This was a faaaaabulous book :) I listened to the audiobook version read by Jesse Bernstein and he was one of the reasons I loved this book.

I always say an audiobook is only as good as the person reading it. I always judge audiobooks majorly on if I liked the person reading to me; if the voice was a good fit, were they good at differentiating the different characters, did they add any special personality that helped bring the characters alive?

Jesse Bernstein was excellent for this book. I completely could imagine that this is what Percy sounded like and he added his own flair to the different characters. Jesse got two thumbs way up for this book and I can't wait to hear more of him :)

The book itself was also excellent. The plot kept me wanting more and, even though I called the ending, I wasn't disappointed. The books still had a lot of great moments that made me laugh, feel sad, and made me ponder. I actually broke my own rule and watched the movie before reading the book and was happy I did. The movie was good (for the me who didn't read the book first) but it never really stuck in my head; I always forgot what happened in the movie. Now that I read the book, I love the book much better than the movie (duh) and I almost see the book and the movie as two different things (instead of a movie based on a book).

I love characters that can make me laugh :) and Percy is on his way to being a little sarcastic joy that I look forward to hearing what kinds of witty retorts he can come up with. Him, Grover and Annabeth are like the new Harry, Ron and Hermione of my life, where I just love seeing what crazy shenanigans they get into (and seeing how they get out of it).

Between the great plot and the excellent reading from Jesse Bernstein, this book gets a well deserved 4.5 stars from me :) I will continue to listen to the audiobook versions just to keep hearing Jesse as Percy and look forward to seeing what else happens to our little heroes.

Court's Decision: