The Lightning Thief Reading - Connections and Tiny Details

Some Percabeth art. I still find it surreal that I had the idea to search Tumblr for art to put on this blog post, and that I followed through with it.

This is the 5th or 4th time I've read Percy Jackson and the Olympians - The Lightning Thief, but it is probably only the 3rd time I'll be finishing it.

This time through, I noticed that a character who is first formally introduced in The Last Olympian, the goddess Hestia, was actually acknowledged to exist in the first book.

The Lightning Thief, page 80

Hestia is the goddess of the hearth. She tends the campfire flames in Camp Half-Blood, and prefers to take the form of a human girl. She is rarely recognized as a goddess by any of the campers. All of thid checks in with the description Percy gives in the page above. This little detail here makes me wonder if Rick Riordan, the author, had planned the entire series from the start.

There are more small details that I noticed, which foreshadow the identity of Percy's godly father. There are plenty which do just that, but these two are ones I only noticed in this reading. The first is when Percy faces the Minotaur while it was raining. Drenched in water, Percy gains a sudden boost in energy, and kills the Minotaur with its own horn. It is never directly said that the rain was what gave Percy the extra energy.

The second detail that I hadn't noticed is during sword practice, when Percy mimics Luke by pouring a bucket of ice water on himself because it looked like a good idea to him. This gives him yet more extra energy, giving himself a chance against Luke. He then manages to perform the disarming maneuver Luke had demonstrated. However, when asked to do that again, the energy boost had already worn off, and Percy is easily defeated.

It seems that pouring ice water on his head had become a major part of his routine before practicing, as noted by Chiron in a version of the official PJO website that I can't seem to find.