By Gabriel Cruz
One of my favorite authors growing up is Rick Riordan, who has an average rating of 4.56 out of 5 on Goodreads. He is most famous for writing the fantasy anthology “Percy Jackson and The Olympians”. Among this book series, Riordan’s best-selling individual novel is Percy Jackson & The Olympians: The Lightning Thief. The series revolves around teenage demigod son of Poseidon Percy Jackson and his destiny in the conflict between the Greek Gods and the Titans. I wholeheartedly believe that this book series is the quintessential coming of age literature that young audiences can use as a gateway to other fantasy novels and genres. Under normal circumstances, Greek mythology is a dense canon that’s centered around mature themes and complicated characters. If you see Percy Jackson “and The Olympians” and are immediately overwhelmed at the thought of trying to understand Greek mythology, I understand; however, Riordan modernizes his takes on these Greek gods, giving them unique personalities and character traits for readers to easily understand and remember. In this series—as well as all his other children’s fantasy novels revolving around various cultural mythologies—Riordan manages to blend realistic moments of humor, relatability, emotion, and humanity with a grandiose adventure of gods and demigods, good versus evil, and mythological spectacle. When I was a kid, Riordan mastered the underdog, hero’s-journey type narrative and encapsulated what it meant to be a hero through the character of Percy Jackson. I admired Percy’s wit and good nature, and I identified with his conflict of identity. If you’re a curious reader, especially a young reader looking to get into new fantasy adventures, Percy Jackson and the Olympian provides an easy-to-understand yet inspiring narrative about destiny and coming to terms with identity. These are themes that I believe any teen can relate to. However, Riordan’s work is not limited to just Percy Jackson and Greek mythology, as he’s written similar fantasy narratives centered around Egyptian theology (The Kane Chronicles) and Norse mythologies (Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard). His witty style and focus on relatability is still present within each of these series, so you’ll never have to worry about the story being boring or too flooded with historical jargon. Ultimately, Rick Riordan’s various works are must-reads if one desires to have a feel-good children’s fantasy.
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