Rick Riordan

Rick Riordan is a writer, born 1964.

Rick Riordan (born 1964 in San Antonio, Texas) found the format that has kept a generation of children reading Greek mythology: take a god, give him a bad temper and a worse family, and put a modern American kid in the room with him. His books have been translated into 42 languages and have sold more than 30 million copies in the United States alone.

The trick is tonal. Riordan writes myth as bureaucracy. Olympus has a management structure, the gods file grievances, and a quest is a badly briefed work assignment with a deadline. That is funnier than reverence and it makes the material stick, because a reader remembers a god who behaves like a difficult colleague long after they have forgotten an epithet. The Lightning Thief (2005) started it, and the four that follow, The Sea of Monsters, The Titan's Curse, The Battle of the Labyrinth and The Last Olympian, are the tightest sequence he has written.

He then ran the same engine on other pantheons. Egyptian in The Red Pyramid, The Throne of Fire and The Serpent's Shadow. Norse in the Magnus Chase books (The Hammer of Thor, The Ship of the Dead). Roman alongside Greek in The Heroes of Olympus (The Lost Hero, The Son of Neptune, The Mark of Athena, House of Hades). The Trials of Apollo (The Hidden Oracle, The Tower of Nero) is the self-aware sequel series, and Daughter of the Deep is the one with no gods in it at all.

Twentieth Century Fox adapted the first two Percy Jackson books as a film series he was not involved with. The Disney+ Percy Jackson and the Olympians, released in 2023, is the do-over: he co-created it, executive produced it, and took two Emmy Awards for it.

Movies (2)

TV (1)

Percy Jackson and the Olympians (2023)

Books (61)

Where to start with Rick Riordan

The Lightning Thief, and there is no argument to be had about it. It is the shortest, the funniest, and it opens a five-book arc that actually lands. Read The Sea of Monsters, The Titan's Curse, The Battle of the Labyrinth and The Last Olympian in order and you can stop there with a clean, complete experience.

If you want more, The Lost Hero restarts with a new cast and a Roman counterpart to the Greek camp; it is the more ambitious sequence even though it is baggier. The Red Pyramid is the Egyptian one and the best of the spin-offs. The Hidden Oracle is for readers who already know the world and want the jokes turned up.

Daughter of the Deep is the odd one out, an adventure with no mythology in it, and it is worth a look precisely because he is off his usual rails. Percy Jackson's Greek Gods is a reference book for a specific kind of obsessive child, and that child will love it.

Percy Jackson, in reading order

Five books that turn Greek mythology into a summer camp with real stakes, and the voice is established by the second page. Read them straight through, because the series is one continuous arc rather than five adventures, and the last two are where the emotional weight lands.

The Heroes of Olympus, for readers who finished Percy

The direct sequel series, with a wider cast, rotating narrators and a slightly older readership. It is more ambitious than the first five and occasionally more uneven, but the ensemble writing is stronger and the Roman half of the mythology opens things up.

Riordan beyond the Greek myths

Once the formula worked he pointed it at other pantheons. The Kane Chronicles take on Egypt, Magnus Chase does Norse with a genuinely funny narrator, and the Trials of Apollo hands the narration to a god who is insufferable about it.

The companion books worth having

The guides and short-story collections are not filler here: Percy Jackson's Greek Gods retells the myths in the character's voice and is a genuinely good introduction to the source material for anyone, not just children.