Percy Jackson and the Free Essay

Until midnight on Tuesday (6/15), Smart Pop Books is offering my essay about Rick Riordan's Percy Jackson and the Olympians series for free on their website!

From my essay "Percy, I Am Your Father" in Demigods and Monsters:

Note to self: Do not become a parent in a fantasy novel. Seriously, have you ever noticed how disturbingly often parents in fantasy novels are dead, kidnapped, missing, clueless, distant, or unknown? Kind of makes me want to round up all the authors, sit them on those pleather psychiatrist couches, and say, "Now, tell me about your mother..."

On the other hand, it works very nicely as a storytelling device: Get the parents out of the way and then something interesting can happen. I think of it as the Home Alone technique. You see it in books by C. S. Lewis, Lemony Snicket, J. K. Rowling... and you definitely see it in Rick Riordan's Percy Jackson and the Olympians series. All the kids at Camp Half-Blood, including the protagonist Percy, are separated from their parents.

But are the parents really gone from the story?

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