Percy Jackson and the Olympians 4 – The Battle of the Labyrinth

Rick Riordan's The Battle of the Labyrinth is a Greek-myth adventure for 10 year olds, and it opens with Percy Jackson trying very hard not to blow up another school.

What happens

He is sitting in his mum's car outside Goode High School, waiting to go into orientation. His mum's boyfriend Paul is on the steps welcoming new pupils. Paul is an English teacher there. Paul is also the reason Percy got a place at all, having talked the school into taking a boy who has been thrown out of every single one he has ever attended.

Paul has not been told the truth about Percy. Percy's mum thought they should wait. You know. So as not to scare him off.

Two things go wrong before Percy reaches the front door. He spots a girl with frizzy red hair he very much does not want to see. And when he sneaks round to the side entrance, two cheerleaders are waiting for him there.

One of them smells of roses and freshly washed horses, which is an odd combination for a teenager. She knows his name. She says they have been waiting for him. And when he squeezes past and accidentally knees her in the leg, it makes a hollow metallic sound, like hitting a flagpole.

That is the fourth page.

What carries the book is Percy himself. He narrates in the first person, dry and quick and constantly expecting the worst, and the chapter titles are jokes he is making at his own expense. He also has dyslexia, and Riordan writes it from the inside rather than as a label. Stitched names look like meaningless spaghetti to him. For a child who finds reading harder than their friends do, having the hero share that is worth a great deal.

Do be aware of what these books are. Percy fights things, sometimes at close quarters, and the monsters here are wearing the faces of ordinary people at his own school. The war the story is building towards is a real one with real casualties, and the tone gets darker as the series goes on.

This is also not the place to begin. A great deal has already happened to Percy, and the book assumes you know who Annabeth is and why his ballpoint pen matters.

What to read next

So if he is new to your reader, send them to The Lightning Thief first. Percy is twelve, he is on a school trip to a museum, and his pre-algebra teacher is about to take a very keen interest in him.