The Sea of Monsters

I've been dwelling over this review for a few days now, I have literally read 2 and a half more books since I finished this one and have reviewed those on the site before coming to review this one. I had read the first Percy Jackson novel in the series earlier in the year and liked it but I hadn't felt an instant draw to pick up the second and so when I did I hoped it would offer me a huge incentive to keep coming back for more from the half-boy half-god son of Poseidon.

This was quite a quick, light read. I flew through it in just over a day but if I'm honest I could happily have seen this book have another hundred or so pages added to it because at times I felt that it lacked some of the expansive world of the first book. I wanted lots of Camp Half-Blood and instead we spend very little time there. No sooner have we arrived than we are off again on a Quest and so we skim the surface of one of the most enjoyable aspects of the world I liked in Book 1. We also have a very brief glimpse of Percy's mom but she is mentioned only in passing and we don't really return to this aspect of Percy's world again in the book.

All the characters we fell in love with in Book 1 are back, Percy, Annabeth and Grover are the fantastic trio but here we find that one of the three isn't present having still gone off on his own journey so Grover is absent for much of the book which is a shame. This is offset somewhat by the arrival of a new character, Tyson, a cylops who is another child of Poseidon and therefore Percy's half-brother. Tyson is almost the saving grace of this book, he is sweet and childlike and innocent and it's clear he is thrilled at finding not just a friend but family but Percy isn't always so thrilled and their story is the high point of this book.

As for the adventure our hero goes on, in this book he is in search of The Golden Fleece because the tree that protects Camp Half-Blood is dying and evil seeks to destroy everything they hold dear, so they need to retrieve the Golden Fleece to restore the order and save everyone before it's too late. To do this they need to cross The Sea of Monsters. This in itself was a good quest but throughout this book I just wanted Riordan to slow everything down just a little, take his time and build the tension a bit more slowly.

Everything seemed to be flying off so quickly, our hero would lurch from one disaster to another and unlike book one there wasn't so much time to pause and expand the story emotionally as we went along. Instead we are so focused on the action that by the end I wasn't sure I had invested my heart into the quest as much as I should have. I didn't feel I'd had enough Annabeth and Percy and Grover moving forward together as friends as I'd expected. I wanted them to grow together and I'm not sure they did.

I liked the book, I'm not sure if this had been the first book in the series I'd have been keen or felt invested enough to return for a second round. The only thing keeping me coming back for more is the glimpses of brilliance I saw in book one. I know Riordan can write great drama and emotion as well as the action and I'm sure that this series would not be so acclaimed unless we could expect more of that as the series goes on. I will be giving book 3 a try but I could only give this one 3 out of 5 stars.