Percy Jackson and The Olympians and Heroes of Olympus Series' by Rick Rirodan

I have loved mythology since the fifth grade when our teacher would read aloud to us about them. I purchased the Percy Jackson series years ago for my kids around the time the first movie came out but we only got a third of the way through reading aloud. I continued to buy the books for the kids in hopes that they would read them and somehow I would have time to, as well. When the second movie came out a couple of months ago, I decided I would read them. I read all five of those books PLUS the four Heroes of Olympus books that are out. 

The Percy Jackson and The Olympians series was written in a light hearted silly way with lots of kid humor in it. A very easy read. I think that is great because for younger readers you don't need anything too heavy so you can capture that love for reading. The books in that series were The Lightning Thief, The Sea of Monsters, The Titan's curse, The Battle of the Labyrinth, and The Last Olympian. My favorite was The Titan's Curse. the Last Olympian was very action packs, too. It was really cool to read about the characters I grew up reading about mixed into these stories of modern day adventures. I would recommend this series to preteens and teens. It is a great work of this mans imagination mixed with the imaginations of people from long ago. 

The Heroes of Olympus series has four books so far, a fifth one is due out next year. That may or may not be the conclusion to the series. The books so far are The Lost Hero, The Son of Neptune, The Mark of Athena, and The House of Hades. These are written in a more mature way. The action is more intense, too. We meet other characters from the Roman side of mythology, too. That gives it a whole new twist. I really enjoyed how they carried the plots of each book and wove in the different characteristics of the gods into them. I would recommend this set to teens and more mature preteens. 

Being a follower of the Jesus way, I try to only read books that do not compromise my beliefs. I do not believe reading mythology does that. They are just stories that people made up. It is true that people believed it and worshiped these false gods. But I still think the stories are interesting and imaginative. *I do have to say that they put something in the last book that displeased me, a same sex attraction. I am not sure why they added it. It is only a small part and it was not acted upon so I did my best to enjoy the book despite my displeasure. 

I have not read the third series, The Kane Chronicles. I will read those when I can find the time. This series contains stories of Egyptian mythology. I had no clue they even had mythology. I will be interested to see what it is like. 

I normally write reviews only on Christian books but there are books out there not labeled Christian that I enjoy reading so I thought it would be fun to post reviews about some of them on here, too. If you know of some great books that aren't labeled Christian fiction but you have found them to be good, clean, exciting reading please share them with me so I can check them out.