Adam Shields

Summary: The parallel book to Lost Hero

This is a book that is hard to discuss without at least some spoilers.  The Percy Jackson Series was a complete series based around the character Percy Jackson, son of the Greek God Poseidon, as he discovers that he is a demigod and works to save the gods from being other thrown by the Titans.

This series is after the first series, but has some of the same characters.  So I would read Percy Jackson first, then this.  In the first book (spoilers start here) we are introduced to Jason Grace, son of Jupiter and his two friends Leo and Piper.  What is revealed at the end of the first book is that the Greek Gods also have Roman sides to them and there is a whole world of Roman demigods that have been kept apart from the Greek demigods.

Jason was from the Roman side and was sent to Camp Half-Blood (the Greek side) by Hera in order to join the Greek and Roman demigods together to overthrow Gaia and the Giants.

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Summary: A new set of heroes are on a quest to free Hera and stop something worse than the Titans from destroying the Gods (and maybe all of humanity with them.)

The Percy Jackson and the Olympians were rightly a popular series of young adult books.  They include magic, heroes, Greek Gods, adventure and lots of historical and mythical references.

With The Lost Hero, Riordan takes the same setting and starts a new series with new main characters.  Jason has no memory of his past.  But he is son of Zeus and and already battle tested and a leader, but he has never been to Camp Half-Blood before.  Leo is a mechanical genius, but after the death of his mother he has been hiding his real power.  Piper is the daughter of a famous movie star and constantly in trouble for theft.

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Summary: We have a way that we attached to romantic partners.  Finding a partner that is compatible with our attachment type makes those attachments more secure, longer lasting, and more fulfilling.  Oriented toward single adults more than couples.

I am fascinated by science books about human relationships and behavior.  One of the best I have read is Mistakes Were Made, But Not By Me.  You can get the point by the title, and nearly two years after I read it, I still frequently bring it up in conversation.  Another interesting and more general book like this is Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex.

Book of this genre are best when they really are based in science, but they attempt to make the science real in lay person terms and ideas.  Mary Roach, who wrote Bonk, takes the tack of writing about the science through her own discovery.  She is a very present character in her books.  The authors of Mistakes Were Made were more traditional science writers.  They referenced studies and gave lots of examples but they were mostly writing from as academic narrators.

Some books get to science based or take a fairly simple idea and run it into the ground far past the attention spans of most readers (The Narcissism Epidemic I think fell into this trap.)  But ever since the original Freakenomics and some of Chris Anderson and Malcolm Gladwell’s books became popular, this style of science/self-help/popular non-fiction came out, there have been many authors that are trying to find the secret to writing good books, that are actually useful and based in real science and understandable.

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