Comparing Harry Potter and Percy Jackson

About a month ago, my sister forced me to read the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series.  Now now, don’t be shocked and appalled that I had to be forced.  I tend to be rather kicking and screaming about reading anything that someone else suggests to me.  I have no idea why I do this.  But I’ve been like this since I was a kid.  Believe it or not, my mom had to force me to read Harry Potter.  I remember that I didn’t want to read it because I had seen a popular girl that I didn’t like reading it on the bus one day.  So naturally my six year old self decided that since that girl was stupid, Harry Potter must also be stupid.  Then of course my mom started reading it to me and I fell instantly in love.  I’ve repeated this process with every single book that I’ve ever loved.  Harry Potter, Ender’s Game, The Hunger Games – I even had my doubts about Looking for Alaska.  But in the end I fell head over heels in love with all of them.  So I guess that I shouldn’t have been surprised that I loved Percy Jackson as much as I did.

A lot of my problem with the idea of the Percy Jackson books was that I had already seen the movie version of The Lightning Thief.  If you’ve seen it, you know that it’s a pretty stupid movie.  My sister HATES that movie with a burning passion, but she told me dozens of times that the book was like “her Harry Potter.”  So I decided to give it a shot.

The funny thing is that while I was reading the books, I wasn’t thinking of Harry Potter at all.  I was so caught up in the clever, modern use of the Greek myths and the endearing, perfect characters that my mind was far from Hogwarts.  But I still know exactly what my sister means by the series being her own Harry Potter– because the Percy Jackson books gave me the same warm fuzzy feeling that Harry Potter has always given me.  No– “warm fuzzy feeling” isn’t really the right way to describe it…it’s more like this heart-wrenching feeling of bittersweet-ness– like you feel so inexplicably full and content but simultaneously distraught that you will never feel the same way again that you feel right at that moment.  You will never feel the effects of that first journey with your favorite characters again.  It’s the best feeling you can get from a work of fiction– this all-encompassing melancholic joy.  That more than anything makes Percy Jackson a worthwhile series.  It makes you feel ALL THE THINGS.

Now that I’ve had some time to reflect on it though, it’s impossible not to see some pretty damn obvious similarities to Harry Potter. 

First of all there’s the whole three companions thing.  It’s pretty easy to label Percy, Grover, and Annabeth as Harry, Ron, and Hermione.  I mean, seriously, Percy even has black hair and green eyes like Harry.  They’re quite a lot alike in personality as well.  They’re both kind of just stupid, adorable derps who happen to be “the chosen one.”  And then Hermione is “the brightest witch of her age” and Annabeth is a daughter of Athena, praised for her strength in wisdom and knowledge.  There really isn’t much of anything alike about Ron and Grover except for their side-kick-like rolls, but with the similarities between the other guys can you blame people for making the connection?

Then there’s the whole prophecy driven plot.  Bear in mind here that I’m not in any way calling Percy a copycat.  It makes perfect sense for a series with heavy reliance on Greek myths to include prophecies and oracles and things of that nature.  Pretty much all fantasy fiction ends up having a “chosen one.”  That’s just the way it is.

And of course there are a bunch of random similarities like the “Mist” and the inability of Muggles to comprehend what’s going on, Annabeth’s invisibility cap and Harry’s invisibility cloak, how people avoid using the gods' names and how people avoid using Voldemort's name, Rachel Elizabeth Dare being that one awful ginger character messing up your main character’s love life that you just want to go away and Ginny being that one awful ginger character messing up your main character’s love life that you just want to go away… I’m sure there’s a bunch of other stuff I’ve forgotten, but you get the point.  They’re a lot alike.

Unsurprisingly, I’m not the only one who thinks that Harry and Percy have got a lot in common.   In the back of one of the books (I can’t remember which) a reviewer says to “look no further for the next Harry Potter.”  And then looking at movie reviews for The Lightning Thief one day I came across some pretty brutal ones, all calling the movie a failed HP knock off.   Honestly, pretty much every bad review was like “blah blah blah this is trying to be Harry Potter but it’s not blah blah blah…”

Here’s the thing though, Harry and Percy might be a lot alike, BUT the voice of Percy Jackson is something completely unique to its series.  I often have a problem with first person narrators because they tend to be pretty whiny since I’m stuck inside their heads, but everything about Percy’s internal monologue is likeable.  Knowing exactly what’s going on in Percy’s head makes him all the more lovable because he’s never annoying, he’s always believable, and he’s hilarious.  And I feel like because of this there’s something more attractive about the way Percy Jackson is written. 

Now, I’m not saying that I like Percy better, because obviously nothing is ever gonna replace Harry Potter for me.  But there are just sometimes when I’m reading HP and I’m like, “Okay, what the hell could J.K. Rowling possibly mean when she says that Tom the bartender from The Leaky Cauldron looks like a ‘toothless walnut?’”  And yes, that is a direct quote from Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.  Every once in a while I’ll come across some weird things like this that irritate me.  I’ve never come across anything that’s really awkwardly worded like that in Percy Jackson and I think that’s probably because it’s told from first person.  I’m sure that first person Harry would never call Tom the bartender a “toothless walnut.”  I understand that a lot of those weirdly described instances are just J.K. Rowling being quirky and whimsical and all that.  And believe me, I love the quirky, whimsical shit– it just annoys me when it doesn’t make sense.

Then there’s the whole issue of the maddening narrative structure of Harry Potter.  Like, I’m reading The Prisoner of Azkaban right now and for the first 80 or so pages every single character refers to the dementors as “the Azkaban guards” just for the point of making things more dramatic when they are finally revealed.  As a first time reader, you probably wouldn’t notice that, but if we’re being honest here it just doesn’t make sense for the characters to avoid calling them dementors.  When you’re rereading the series and you already know that they’re called dementors, it’s definitely distracting.  It takes you out of the magical world and brings you back to the real one, reminding you that this is fiction, that there is a plot going on here and that J.K. Rowling is trying to hide vital facts from you for dramatic effect.  On a similar note, WHY DOESN’T HARRY KNOW THAT VOLDEMORT’S FOLLOWERS ARE CALLED DEATH EATERS UNTIL HALFWAY THROUGH THE SERIES!  Death Eaters are referenced constantly in books 1-3 but they don’t get a name until book four.  That’s so stupid!  Same thing goes for the Dark Mark.  Why doesn’t Harry Goddamn Potter know what the symbol of Voldemort looks like until Goblet of Fire?  Alex Carpenter has a pretty excellent video further explaining my feelings on this subject if you want to hear someone describe it more eloquently.

Percy Jackson is pretty good at keeping up the suspense of what’s going to happen next, and Rick Riordan doesn’t have to keep the overarching plot a secret from us throughout the entire series.  From the very beginning we know that there’s a prophecy.  And I’m pretty sure that by book two we know that Percy’s most likely the “chosen one” who’s gotta put Kronos back in his place.  Granted we don’t know everything the prophecy says but it’s better than in Harry Potter where you have to wait until book five to discover the existence of a prophecy at all.  And honestly, didn’t we kind of already know what the prophecy had to say?  Didn’t we already know that Harry had to kill Voldemort?  WHY DID NO ONE TELL HARRY ABOUT THE PROPHECY BEFORE?!  I doubt that it would have shocked him, even as an eleven or twelve year old that he was the one that had to kill Voldemort.  As Hermione often says in book five, he’s got a “saving people thing.”  Obviously he wanted to be the one to kill Voldemort just like HE wanted to be the one to save the Philosopher’s/Sorcerer’s Stone and HE wanted find out who the Heir of Slytherin was.

I love love love love love Harry Potter and I love J.K. Rowling, but I honestly feel like a first person narrator and some revision to the narrative structure could have made it something even more amazing.  Harry Potter has one of the most intricate, detailed, and captivating stories of all time…but I just wish that Harry was present in the same way that Percy was throughout all of his series.