A Pagan’s Review of Percy Jackson ⚡️

‘ The older lady harrumphed. "I warned you, daughter. This scoundrel Hades is no good. You could've married the god of doctors or the god of lawyers, but noooo. You had to eat the pomegranate.’

- From The Last Olympian by Rick Riordan

The Rick Riordan craze is hard to understand unless you’ve lived through it- Camp Halfblood t-shirts, book releases, online Greek mythology quizzes. I think few adults realize how much it shaped my generation. You can complain all you want about the fast-paced, irreverent style of Percy Jackson, but those books sparked a flood interest in the Greek Gods- and it’s leading more and more teens to Paganism and witchcraft. 

The Riordanverse was groundbreaking. Growing up, I never read a protagonist of color until Heroes of Olympus. The first gay character I ever stumbled upon was Nico DiAngelo in The House of Hades. From deaf elves to Arab-American valkyries, Rick Riordan is the king of casual representation. Divorced parents, dyslexia, ADHD… his books help kids see themselves in fiction. And that’s not even including all the queer kids who figured out their identities because of Riordan’s characters. Like most of my generation, I can’t imagine my childhood without Percy Jackson.

So Riordan’s books are a great way to get kids excited about mythology. Are they a good depiction of the Greek Gods? OH HELL NO

Look, Percy Jackson wasn’t written to represent how modern Pagans view the Theoi. Percy Jackson was written to tell an entertaining story, and if we want books that reflect our spiritual beliefs, we’re going to have to write them ourselves. But unfortunately, many people can’t separate the Theoi from the heavily fictionalized gods they read about in the Riordanverse. And the gods in Percy Jackson are barely deserving of worship. 

This not to say that all of Riordan’s depictions of the Theoi are awful. There are some brilliant reimaginings, like Hestia holding onto the spirit of hope from Pandora’s jar and Hermes running a delivery service. I can totally see Iris starting a vegan grocery store. And Artemis in The Titan’s Curse was my gay awakening- a group of immortal teenage girls living in the forest together? Sign me up.

And yet… there are moments when Riordan’s depictions of the Theoi make me cringe. Percy Jackson’s Greek Gods, one of my first mythology books, has a retelling of Homeric Hymn to Demeter called “Persephone Marries Her Stalker (Or, Demeter the Sequel).” After rereading it for the first time in years, I was sickened to read that Percy “didn’t understand all the fuss” about Persephone’s abduction. (Folks, we’re literally talking about child marriage). Demeter’s chapter was just as bad, though. “Don’t get too excited, because this one is about the goddess of grain,” the opening line quips. “Demeter just rocks when it comes to carbohydrates.”

I’m trying super hard not to get offended.

The paradox of Percy Jackson is that it left my generation with a lot of misconceptions about the Greek Gods, but it also sparked an interest in our pantheon. I was already fascinated with the Theoi before reading Riordan’s books, but it was Percy Jackson that helped me imagine a world where I could follow them in real life. 

What struck me most from Percy Jackson was the story of a girl named Zoë Nightshade who devotes her life to the goddess Artemis. When Zoë dies, Artemis cradles her beloved devotee in her arms and transforms her body into a fictional constellation called The Huntress. Zoë is technically a lieutenant in the Hunt, but I always imagined her as a priestess- and in that moment, all I wanted was to serve Artemis, too. As a child, that scene was more impactful to me than any story I read in Bible.

Years later, I still look for The Huntress among the stars, warmed by the fact that there’s another girl who loves the Gods…. even in fiction