Witty Little Knitter

I like the basic idea. OK it's more than that. I think the idea of ancient greek gods still walking around is awesome.Unfortunately I was less impressed by the execution of this idea. First of all: the narrator didn't sound like a 12-year old, more like a very sarcastic 16-year old, everytime Percy mentioned that he was only 12 I couldn't really believe it. He also didn't really act like you'd expect a 12-year old, who is constantly attact by mythological monsters, to act. OK, he is a half-god, but he still is a 12 year old halg-god who hadn't any idea that he was one until the beginning of the book. You'd expect him to show that he is really scared a few times.Though a sarcastic person could now mention that he hasn't much reason to be scared: he costantly battles monsters, without getting as much as a scratch even though he barely has any fighting-experience.Another issue I had, was that the author seemed to confuse quantity with quality in terms of originality (I think that's a problem several (YA)-fantasy-writers have). He just constantly throws new creatures/monsters/magic stuff at the reader, without ever giving many details about them. You can probably half-excuse this with the fact that at least he doesn't invent new five-legged flying bears but only uses creatures from greek mythology (though I sometimes though a bit more information had been nice. My own greek mythology is a bit rusty and I'm not sure how well-informed the intended target-group is).I also found most of the people didn't like Percy (not the actually bad guys, people like Clarisse, Mr. D and Gabe) seemed very flat. They were evil bullies who hated Percy. Full Stop. Admittedly that's also something you could accuse Harry Potter of, especially the first books...Talking about Harry Potter: Percy goes to a magical school, where the pupils are seperated in different houses, one is full of really mean people and Percy has one very bright female friend and another not-as-bright male friend. I know that from somewhere.One last rant: They are so terribly stupid...I mean you'd think after getting attacked by monsters a couple of times they'd realize that it would be a good idea to stay together all the time...but no they don't. I think there were at least four scenes where I thought 'No, please, you can't be THAT stupid...oh wait you are'...Now that all makes it sound like a really terrible book. But despite everything I quite liked Percy, he is funny. And the book was thrilling enough that I finished it in two days. And -see above- the idea is to awesome to not give the series another chance.