I am having withdrawal syndrome

So here we are, the first of my so called book reviews. I'm only writing this to vent my frustration and to get over my Percy Jackson phase.

I'm scared I might not be able to finish all the books on my 'challenge list' on time because I just finished the Percy Jackson series and like all good typical teen fantasy series, it's leaving me with this huge bottomless pit full of agony and sadness in my stomach.

Reading your favourite childhood book is like visiting an old friend.

I first picked up Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief by sheer luck (pause to rip off my sister's ridiculous keyboard protector thing off her laptop. I don't understand why people put up with these flimsy plastic things. To keep of the dust? Why?) when I was fifteen, or sixteen. It was a great book! Fast paced, very sarcastic humour (my favourite kind) and full of Greek mythology, a subject I've always been interested in. I stopped after the second book and now that I'm out of teens, I'm finally continuing with the series which is great!

I read the third, fourth and fifth book feverishly in the span of two days and since they're all pretty much one story, all the books are blended into my head so that I can't recall which plot detail is from which book anymore. All in all, my favourite is the final one, Percy Jackson and The Last Olympian (whoops, almost wrote Harry Potter there). I love the final battle, I love figuring out who's the bad guy, who's the spy, who the prophecy is about. I love googling more info about each Greek character that comes up (Yes, that's the kind of person I am, guilty).

Rick Riordan is a very good writer in his genre. He doesn't try to show off with his words and he's created a very believable world. There's not too much detail and no extensive explanations as in some fantasy books, Garth Nix's The Morrow Days series, for instance. That makes for a very fast read, lots of laugh out loud moments, and the plots are very neatly tied together.

The thing about the series is that there's no happily ever after ending, like The Lord of the Rings and the Harry Potter series. I mean, when you finish those books, when I finished them at least, I felt content. The characters were all given a 'place' in their world, all was well. Bravo. But the Percy Jackson series ended in a way that you still wanted to know what was going to happen to all of them, hence the withdrawal syndrome. So I'm glad that Rick Riordan is picking up from where he left of with his Heroes of Olympus series. I haven't, and will not be getting around to reading that just yet cause I don't want to experience this ache of waiting for the next book all over again. Most of the same characters will be in the new series, I heard, so there'll be more of Percy Jackson and my favourite character, Annabeth Chase.

And here ends my book review.

It's a great book series if you enjoy light fantasy. It's funny if you have my sense of humour. I'm sure most people are aware of the Percy Jackson series due to the highly-not-true-to-the-book-but-pretty-good-and-well-cast-movie-version-if-you're-not-a-crazy-die-hard-fan-and-willing-to-watch-the-movie-with-a-grain-of-salt-and-open-mind so I don't think an extensive introduction to the series is required.

Read if it's your cup of tea. And if you didn't finish the series when you were in high school like me, read it to visit an old friend.