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.
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