Bittersweet Reading

I don’t know if any one else ever feels like this, but I’m caught up in a really good book and I don’t want it to end. Actually, it’s not just a book it’s a series, and the series didn’t get really good until halfway through the third book of five. The first two and a half books were a fun little bit of brain candy, a better way to spend time than watching television. Then I guess the writer, Rick Riordan (sounds like a TV detective), decided he needed to start tying things up, and stopped with the obvious character developments and plot and got deep into the storytelling. 99 times out of 100 I would have quit fifty pages in. I would have chalked it up as a blatant Harry Potter rip-off, but the story was in my literary wheelhouse. It’s about demi-gods and Greek mythology in the 21st century. I think Riordan’s main goal was to expose kids to Greek mythology that they most likely didn’t know, as well as things they were familiar with but may not have known were Greek mythology. Does that sentence make sense? It’s late and I’m not fixing it, so I guess it really doesn’t matter. Anyway, I think education was his primary goal before the first book became a best seller and then he was stuck writing a series, might as well do a good job. Now that I’m almost at the end – just started the 5th book – I’m sad that it’s almost over. I’m also curious to find out if he has the courage to kill off his hero. Greek heroes don’t live happily ever after, and Riordan has made that point more than once in the story. I hope he doesn’t. I hope Percy and Annabeth get to ride off into the sunset. They’ve grown up with absentee parents. Just because the Greek gods are immortal doesn’t mean they’re good moms and dads. They’ve spent their tweens fighting monsters and trying to save the world. They deserve a break and some downtime. I’m a sucker for a happy ending, love triumphant and a bit with a dog.