The Lightning Thief

What is our individual background with The Kane Chronicles?

My mom bought this book when it came out because she was like, yeah, my kids like The Lightning Thief.

And none of us read it.

Cool.

Jack, we've talked about it as to what do we think happened? Do we think that an editor came in and mucked this one up? Do we think that there wasn't enough editing and the conclusion I've come to as someone who has absolutely no actual knowledge of what happened, but a guess.

is that I believe it was both because if you look, this book came out in 2006 and Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief came out in 05.

And so if this one came out in 06, less than a year later, about a year later, my best guess is that Rick was required to pump out the sequel as fast as possible after the success of the first one.

And that meant that it was rushed.

You would think.

Yeah.

So I really think those are all of my thoughts when it comes to how it does as equal, how it compares to the lightning thief.

My tank is dry when it comes to that.

Um...

I did actually kind of discover Rick Riordan's writings back in 2009, just several months before the first film adaptation of his first book, Lightning Thief, was released in theaters.

And I actually enjoyed the book surprisingly a lot.

I actually fell down the rabbit hole and was a fan and wanted to read all of...

Rick Riordan stuff for a while.

I know a lot of people were upset with them, and Riordan himself has very famously kind of denounced and put those movies down quite harshly.

Maybe, in my opinion, a little too harshly.

It's not that I think they were perfect adaptations by any stretch, but I also think Riordan's books have a harder time being translated to live action in some ways.

The first one.

Yeah, number five on the list is The Lightning Thief, book one.

The absolute origin story.

It has a 4.31 out of 5 on Goodreads.

Well, we have to look at the structural mechanics of what an origin story actually has to achieve.

Okay.

The Lightning Thief has to do an immense, almost unfair amount of heavy lifting for the rest of the series.

That's fair.

Yeah.

Whereas I'm like, Rick, if I had to wait three years in between Lightning Thief and Sea of Monsters, I would be like, what are you doing? It's like

300 pages.

Sure.

And I think a little bit sad in some ways because she doesn't start out that way.

I think she is at her most interesting in The Lightning Thief when she is allowed to...

She made that same original sin as Mae Castellan.

She overcame it and was able to overcome it.

Like, I think that we just get so much more of an interesting view of Sally in the TV show.

That's why I keep bringing it up.

That, like, she... is not, I think in the, there's so much exposition to get through in the lightning thief.

And there's so much world building that we have to like do really fast because of how the plot moves that like, Sally is definitely just in that book when she, after she's captured, just like, here is the goal, you know, like she becomes a goal and not a person anymore because we've got a, we've got a road trip across America.

But, yeah, and I definitely had watched the movie prior to that at some point.

Because I watched, like, Lightning Thief when it came out.

And, boy, that was a letdown and a half, I don't mind telling you.

Because I was, like, perfectly the right age to be obsessed with Percy Jackson at the time.

Cause he's got such an interesting like cocktail of bad vibes going on in the book where it's like, he is feeling neglected by Poseidon.

He's like, I did the cool, I saved your ass.

I caught the lightning thief.

Why won't you talk to me? And then it's like, not only is Percy feeling neglected, here comes Tyson, who gets claimed by Poseidon pretty much night one, doesn't have to do anything.