I read an article that claimed that grown men shouldn’t be reading books like Percy Jackson. This ticked me off, so I decided I would go and read Percy Jackson.
I read through the book now, and I have some thoughts.
The book is indeed for children. It is not an adult’s book. The story is really not that deep, but it can be made into a movie as it has been.
What really struck me was the insane amount of product placement in this book. It seemed to me like the author was constantly trying to sell you New York or America or just American brands and products.
For example, when the kids on the show want to get a train to New York or to LA, they wouldn’t call it the train. They would take the Amtrak. When they got some cookies or biscuits, they would be called Double Stuffed Oreos. They speak of how they want to visit burger king. Dionysus, the god, is forbidden from drinking alcohol by Zeus, so he drinks cherry cola. There are numerous instances where gods make a can of fresh cherry cola materialize and they drink it. They could have just called it soda, but no it has to be cherry cola. There are references to Nike, Pepsi, Converse, Mobil and so many other American brands.
The story as well, it would have made sense if it were located in Greece or Europe somewhere. They had to make up a whole story about how the gods move according to where the hegemon is or something. Now America is a place to be, so all the gods are in America. Even when it wasn’t an American thing, it was a Western thing; it was all about the Western civilization. The gods were to go away; the Western civilization would collapse, apparently. What is it with this America or West thing?
I guess the non-white world is not a place mythical Greek gods would want to be.
Even if we were to ignore this Western civilization and Greek gods connection that the author wanted to emphasize, it’s still so embarrassing to have so much product placement in your book.
Long ago, I had heard about how movies and books and media were shipping the American culture to the rest of the world and how this was part of how America was keeping its dominance across the world. Books like this make me feel like that’s probably true because I would never expect this level of product placement in a kid’s book from decades ago.
The book on the whole is pretty good. Can’t complain. It is far from an adult book. It is indeed a kid’s book.
