Thats book one, and there are currently 8 books in the series.
INCORRECT, good ser.
There is in fact not 8 books in the series, for there it is not merely a single series, but two!; despite both series covering a similar/recurring cast of characters.
The first series was "Percy Jackson and the Olympians," and was only a 5-book series with
- Lightning Thief,
- Sea of Monsters,
- Titan's Curse,
- Battle of the Labyrinth,
- & Last Olympian
as the actual books in the series, which primarily only focuses on the Greek aspect of the whole combined universe they are in, and follow Percy, Annabeth, and Grover & their journey to stop the Titan War.
The other series Rick decided to make afterwards, since he wanted to continue that nice little universe he created with
"Heroes of Olympus," which only 3 of the (I believe its also a) 5 book series have come out with,
- Lost Hero
- Son of Neptune
- & Mark of Athena
currently out.
So... two entirely different series within the same universe and recurring characters.
So I had to read Lightning Thief as a class literature project back in 5th grade (quite a few years ago!), and honestly, our entire class essentially fell in love with the series at that point, and all of us began picking up the ongoing titles as they came out afterwards.
The "Percy Jackson and the Olympians" original 5 books are probably my only favourites out of the total 8 books in the universe thus far.
I guess this is a similar issue I have between how I determined which Fullmetal Alchemist I liked because...
Although both FMA:Brotherhood and Heroes of Olympus both essentially have a wider cast of characters, which is nice to me, both never touch on said characters as much, not giving them as much as a personal focus on them.
I DON'T CARE ABOUT THEM, as I would the characters in the original 5 books.
They just aren't... Interesting enough to captivate me to like them, and thus, puts me off the series as a whole.
I am also quite a history nut, as many of my first games were either that being centered on Mythology or the Medieval ages (Age of Mythology/Empires respectively), and really, the original series really went deep and twisted a lot of the actual Greek myths and wove it into the story in a really clever way while giving a lot of information on said Greek myths in the process.
Heroes of Olympus barely scratches the surface to me, and although adding the Roman element is nice, it adds to much lore to balance out you can barely go that in-depth with it, which disappoints me a bit.
Although I do think Mark of Athena is the best book so far out of the newer franchise, it actually felt more interesting though is one of those examples of touching too little on the lore.
Also:
THE PERCY JACKSON LIGHTNING THIEF MOVIE WAS ABYSMAL.
I watched this with my friends and cousins who were also pretty much strongly into the series, having read all the books that had come out up to that time in history.
That move shat on everything that was good about the first book, and turned it into a bad Hollywood knock off.
Annabeth is not black-haired, she is blonde.
Grover doesn't entirely act the way he does in the books as he does the movie (and he isn't supposed to be African American is he?)
Plus, the whole "what your demi-god power" scene was not in the movie, and they never even included the person there as a character, that being Clarisse and the restroom/toilet scene.
*sigh*
