Oh Man, Series Books Will Be the Death of My Sleep

My sister, an avid science fiction and fantasy reader, has been complaining as of late that all sci fi and fantasy books are part of a series only because the author wants to make more money. Therefore, she hasn't read a sci fi or fantasy book in at least two months (which is the longest she's ever gone since discovering the genres in seventh grade). (As an aside, that was also the time that my parents started to worry about her strange sleep patterns.)

Well that all well and good in theory, but then you come across a series you get hooked on and suddenly all of your book-principles go right out the door.

No hard cover books? Broke that rule.

Material with some kind of intelligence? Broke that rule.

No series books by authors who are clearly banging out these series because Johnny's gotta go to Yale? Broke that rule.

But it was so worth it.

It was so worth it I stayed up TWO HOURS past my (old person) bed time of ten thirty.

I've been reading The Son of Neptune, the sequel to The Lost Hero, the first book in Rick Riordan's The Heroes of Olympus series. I bought it right after I finished The Lost Hero, but didn't get around to starting it until last week. I got hung up on a couple of other books, so I picked this up tonight around page 250 and just kept going until it was done. Did I mention I was only supposed to read for 20 minutes before bed?

Regardless, I thoroughly enjoyed it. While the last book talked about Jason, Piper, and Leo and their quest to free Hera, this book picks up after that book chronologically. Percy (yes, that Percy Jackson) has had his memory wiped and has been hanging out with some wolves, training for who-knows-what. He finds his way to Camp Jupiter, where he meets Frank and Hazel. Frank is the awkward son of Mars, the God of War, and one of the most important gods to the Romans. Hazel is the previously-dead-but-now-resurrected-for-reasons-we-don't-know-yet-this-early-in-the-book daughter of Pluto, God of the underworld. She did some bad stuff in her last life that plays heavily into this story line. These three demigods must go up to Alaska on a quest to destroy a giant who will play a role in the end of the world as we know it.

Despite my hope for a nifty resolution quickly so that I may get on with my life and go back to being scornful of all things fantasy, I was not given one. In fact, the series will have five books in it and won't be done until 2014 (thank you, Wikipedia). So I can add this to my list of love/hate fantasy books that I love because they are exciting to read, but hate, because I don't want to wait five years for the next book (I'm looking at you George R.R. Martin and your shenanigans with A Dance With Dragons). The upshot is that I know the next book, The Mark of Athena is coming out in October, so I only have to wait a couple of months.

Again, is it necessarily high-quality literature? No. Is it exciting enough that I want to stay up two hours past bed time to finish it? Yes. Will I be mad because my students come in bleary-eyed from staying up too late reading this? Absolutely not. Because I will be in the same boat. After I've announced a surprise "Let's all read at the exact same time for as long as it takes before I get bored!" time so I can inch ahead of them in the book.