The Last Olympian (Rick Riordan)

The Last Olympian
(Percy Jackson & the Olympians series, Book 5)
Rick Riordan
Disney Hyperion
Fiction, YA Fantasy
**** (Good)

DESCRIPTION: Four years ago, Percy Jackson didn't know who his real father was. He didn't know why strange, monstrous things seemed to keep turning up in his life, or that there were other children just like him all across the country. He didn't know that the gods of Greece still reigned from Mount Olympus, now centered over New York City.  He'd never heard of the Great Prophecy, from the lips of the Oracle of Delphi, which foretold the end of Western civilization. He'd never even fought with a sword.
Things have changed since then.
A son of the Greek god Poseidon, Percy inherited powers over water and a telepathic link to horses - and, like all half-blood children of the Olympic gods, an unusual attraction to monsters out of Greek mythos. With his friends Annabeth (daughter of Athena, godess of wisdom) and Grover (a satyr), he's fought all manner of impossible foes, visited the kingdom of Hades, and even challenged Titans. But worse is to come. Kronos, Titan lord of time, has regained material existence. Even now, he marches on Olympus with an army of monsters, fellow Titans, and half-bloods who turned on their own absentee parents. The Great Prophecy foretold that a heroic half-blood would decide the fate of the known world in the climactic battle to come... but it also predicted that hero's death. To save his friends and his family, Percy must be willing to make the ultimate sacrifice - and even that might not be enough to stop Kronos from succeeding.

REVIEW: Percy's adventures are a fun hybrid of modern humor with classical Greek myths, fast-paced and easily accessible even to those of us who weren't obsessively reading Homer through our formative years. Riordan concludes the series with an appropriately cataclysmic confrontation between god and Titan, monster and hero, and even father and son. Some of the plot twists were obvious, but not all of them. Not everyone makes it through to the ending, and those who do find that their roles in the finale aren't at all what they expected. The book feels overlong at times, with some sequences running a few pages past the point of impact. Overall, I found the series very entertaining, well worth reading.