Rick Riordan - Demigods and Monsters

But just like Percy Jackson, you too can achieve success in all your quests if you apply these same lessons: Avoid conflict when you can, keep your eyes and ears open, and always look at the whole picture. And like Percy, don’t ever be afraid to ask for help from your friends.

Rosemary Clement-Moore is the author of supernatural mystery novels for young (and not so young) adults, including Texas Gothic and The Splendor Falls . Her books have been included on the ALA list of best books for teens and received starred reviews from Kirkus Reviews and School Library Journal . She has a long history with Greek gods, ever since she played Persephone in a musical (with singing and dancing nymphs!) that she wrote with her class in theater school. You can visit her Web site at www.readrosemary.com.

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Garden gnomes, waterbeds, donuts . . . it seems you can’t go shopping for anything these days without running into a monster. Cameron Dokey explains why so many monsters have jobs in the service industry, and why shopping, for demigods, is a very dangerous business.

It’s not easy being a young demigod.

Just ask Percy Jackson. He can tell you.

Always assuming he has time to catch his breath between pursuing a quest or being pursued by the forces of evil hot on his trail, sometimes literally breathing down his neck right behind him.

In Shakespeare, there’s a stage direction that reads: Exit, pursued by a bear . (I am not either making this up. You can look it up for yourself if you want to. It’s in The Winter’s Tale , Act III, scene 3. And you thought Shakespeare was just some stuffy dead guy.)

But my point, and I do have one, is that the character in Shakespeare had it lucky. At least he knew it was a bear behind him. Whenever Percy Jackson flees the scene, he never knows what shape the thing after him might take. That’s one of the challenges of being chased by monsters. And that’s not all. Equally challenging may be the fact that Percy also never really knows what’s up ahead. Friend or foe. Battle or temptation.

Which pretty much brings me to the topic of this essay: Just what is it about monsters and shopping?

There are a lot of monsters in Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson and the Olympians series. There are also a surprising number of opportunities for shopping. Action, adventure, Greek gods, retail therapy. Not your ordinary combo. Not that much about Percy falls within the realms of the usual.

An ordinary demigod? I just don’t think so.

But on almost every quest Percy takes, and his first one in particular, sooner or later, some creep who definitely doesn’t have Percy’s best interests at heart pops up to try to sell him something. Sometimes it’s something he doesn’t need. Sometimes it’s something he doesn’t want. Usually it’s both. But Percy and his pals stop to check the whatever-it-is out anyway.

Yes, that’s right. Even with danger all around them, our hero and his companions take the time to shop.

What the heck is that all about?

Let’s begin to answer this question by doing the same thing Percy and his quest mates Grover the satyr and Annabeth, daughter of Athena, goddess of wisdom, do in chapter eleven of The Lightning Thief . Which, as I’m sure I don’t need to remind you, is Percy Jackson and the Olympians book one.

Like Percy, Annabeth, and Grover, we’re going to kick off our monster retail tour with a visit to ATNYU MES GDERAN GOMEN MEPROIUM.

For those of us not afflicted with demigod dyslexia, that would be Aunty Em’s Garden Gnome Emporium.

True confession: Aunty Em’s Garden Gnome Emporium is my favorite monster retail experience of all time. Probably because I didn’t have to actually experience it myself. But also because Aunty Em turns out to be Aunty “M.” That’s short for Medusa, who may be the original experiencer of the bad hair day.

Actually, considering she has to go around with snakes on her head where her hair’s supposed to be, I think we could just go with bad hair life.

Good rule to follow, in case it should happen to come up: Never piss off Athena, goddess of wisdom, Annabeth’s mom. That’s how Medusa ended up as old snakehead, and now she’s plenty pissed off. So pissed that one look at her hairdo is all it takes to turn you to stone. If you look at a reflection of her, you’re good to go. But if you look at her, well, head on. . . .

That’s who all the garden gnomes in the emporium are—creatures of one sort or another who looked Aunty Em right in her beady, bloodshot eyes. Grover even thinks he spots one that looks a lot like his Uncle Ferdinand. It turns out he’s right. Only it doesn’t just look a lot like his Uncle Ferdinand. It is his Uncle Ferdinand.

Grover gets extra points, by the way, for urging his companions not to set foot in Aunty Em’s Garden Gnome Emporium. He’s certain he smells monsters, and it turns out he’s absolutely right. Unfortunately, Percy and Annabeth overrule him. Not necessarily because they’ve developed a sudden interest in acquiring yard art for Camp Half-Blood, but because they smell burgers and they’re hungry.

Let’s just re-cap the overall scenario, shall we?

Percy, Grover, and Annabeth have just begun their quest. They know there’s danger all around them. In fact, they’ve just escaped from an attack by all three of the Furies in the back of a bus, which is no mean feat, I can tell you. So I suppose I should cut Percy and Annabeth some slack, because it does make a certain amount of sense that all that Fury-fighting would have made them hungry.

But instead of heading for a nice safe McDonald’s, where you can always use the bathroom even if you don’t buy a Happy Meal, what does our hero do instead? He leads his friends straight to the back of a warehouse filled with extremely odd yet lifelike statuary. Why? Because the proprietor, whose face is completely hidden from sight by a veil (did I forget to mention that?), says there’s a free snackbar.

Huh?

Surely the thing somebody ought to be smelling right about now is a rat. Strangely enough, nobody, with the possible exception of Grover, does. This is monster retail at its best and brightest: sidetracking the hero and his companions, then putting their lives at risk. The fact that they all eventually escape is fine and dandy. It’s also cause for alarm. Because it’s right here, with the trip to Aunty Em’s Garden Gnome Emporium, that a pattern starts to form.

When the going gets tough, the heroes go shopping. But somehow they never notice until it’s way too close to too late that the only thing the monsters really have for sale is trouble.

Here’s another case in point: chapter seventeen of The Lightning Thief . That’s when our gang pays a visit to Crusty’s Waterbed Palace.

Percy’s quest to retrieve Zeus’ lightning bolt has taken him and his companions from the East Coast to Los Angeles by this time. No sooner do they set foot in the city, however, than they’re set on by a pack of thugs. And it is while trying to escape from them that our trio decides to pay an impromptu visit to the Waterbed Palace.

So far, so good. But wait! There’s more. Because once inside the Waterbed Palace, something strange happens. Well, more than one thing, if the full truth must be told. But the specific strange thing I’m getting at is this: Percy and his companions stick around.

Our hero and his friends have made it all the way across the country and they’re still not much closer to finding Zeus’ lightning bolt than they were when they set out. Time is definitely doing that thing where it runs out. So what do Percy, Grover, and Annabeth do?