So there he was, feeling rather sorry for himself at yet another camp for
children with behavioral problems.
He never felt that he ''fitted in'', and this
Perseus – Percy for short – has the innate capacity to attract fire and flood (well, almost). So after a series of (mis) adventures, rretold in the First Person by the self-styled “imprudent” hero, he find himself at yet another Camp. This one, however, was tailor-made for eponymous Half Blood
children, i.e. those who have been fathered (or born to) gods and goddesses from the Greek pantheon.
Upon this premise, Rick Riordan has painted a vivacious, multi-faceted tale of love, conspiracy, and –literally! - Underworld Dealings (my capitals, but perhaps Percy’s too). He weaves a tale of today with happenstance straight out oif the Ancient Greek chronicles… and the result is a rollercoaster of fact, fiction, adventure… and lots of history, geoigraphy and psychology thrown in for good measure.
Percy’s friend a slight problem with walking; yret inexplicably, he runs like the wind. His friend Annabeth is bossy. Yet their combined pzazaa and resourcefulness – with their lienage it is extraneoius to spoeak of
dues ex machinae – they are bound to suvcced in their quest.
The Oracle has a nasty habit of foretelling the future in such ambiguous and misleading sentences; perhaps so that whatever happened, they would be able to say “I told you so”.
So as the story unfolds, we wonder how Perseus will ‘fail to save what matters most’ and which ‘friend’ will betray him.
At one point, the bus in which Percy is riding breaks down; and when the passengers alight… lo and behold, two of suspicious-looking crones are knitting gargantuan blue socks, whilst the third one, seated at the centre, abruptly decides to cut the wool from the skein. Incongruously, they are sitting beside a stall where the fruit, in Glorious Technicolor, simply shouting the word ‘Cornucopia’ just begs to be sampled.
It is patently obvious (but not to Percy) that these three hags are the Fates: Clotho the Spinner, Lachesis the Drawer of Lots, and Atropos the Cutter. And everybody knows that when the latter decides to use her “abhorred shears”, someone’s “thread of life” is severed, and he dies.
Author Rick Riordan says most writers do not consciously select their imagery or symbolism – yet to him, the fruit stand was
the right place for them to appear. “You actually won''t find the answer to the Fates appearance in book one. They are foretelling a death that will happen later in the series. Percy himself doesn''t know that at the time,” he says.
Who will be the lucky (?) recipient of the socks? Ah, that would be telling!
It is less than useless conjecturing as to why a teacher of
Mathematics had to be in the limelight at one point…
In another instance, Chiron, who talks like the teacher he is (he holds degrees in music, medicine and hunting), says that
Most thinking observers would agree that thieving is not Poseidon’s style… And there, of course, lies the crunch.