A To Z Challenge 2023: Myth And Folk Tales In Fiction - P Is For Percy Jackson And Other Such YA Stuff

 You may or may not have read any of the Percy Jackson novels by Rick Riordan, or seen the films, but I bet you have heard about them. I like Rick Riordan for giving children an introduction to mythology in the form of entertaining fiction. I would be very surprised if there weren’t kids who looked up the Greek myths after reading this series. 

I admit I have only read the first novel in this series, Percy Jackson And The Lightning Thief,  but I enjoyed it. Percy Jackson is living with his mother when he finds out that his father is the Greek god Poseidon. He is in huge danger, so goes to a place for young demigods - no, not Hogwarts, Camp Halfblood! There he meets his new group of friends and they end up going on a road trip in search of Zeus’s lightning bolt, which has been stolen and Percy blamed. One of his friends is a satyr called Grover, the other a girl called Annabeth Chase, a daughter of Athena. The whole adventure is centred around characters from Greek mythology. There are five novels in the series plus a couple of non fiction linked books about Greek mythology.

Annabeth makes a guest appearance in Magnus Chase And The Sword Of Summer, the first of a trilogy. She is the cousin of Magnus, the hero of this series. He, too, is a demigod, but not one of the Greek pantheon; his father is the Norse god Frey, one of the Vanir who went to Asgard in a trade off after a war between Asgard and Vanaheim. Frey is the god of fertility and abundance. He lost his amazing sword when he traded it to his servant in return for helping him win the beautiful giantess Gerd. As a result, it will be used to kill him at Ragnarok. This is the “Sword of Summer” of the title. It’s all there in the Norse myths.

Magnus has been living on the streets since his mother died protecting him from two supernatural wolves, the “children of Fenris” two years ago, hanging out with his friends Blitz and Hearth, homeless guys who are more than they seem. He retrieves the sword from under the river running through Boston - in this novel Boston is the centre of Yggdrasil the World Tree. Fighting the evil firelord Surt, protecting innocent bystanders, Magnus is killed and finds himself transported to Valhalla by part-time Valkyrie Samira Al-Abbas(she goes to school the rest of the time and tells her grandparents she is tutoring when she goes off to collect souls for Valhalla). Samira - Sam - is a daughter of Loki, so isn’t trusted by the other Valkyries. 

In fact, many of the people in Valhalla are demigods, though it isn’t Camp Halfblood and strictly speaking you don’t have to be a demigod to get a place there. 

Thinking about it, the Greek gods, at least, were always fathering children by mortals, so it makes sense that they are still doing it - no wonder there are so many young demigods in the works of Rick Riordan! 

Hilariously, Valhalla is now shown as a five star hotel with plenty of high technology(but no GPS). As we read in the Norse myths, the inhabitants, awaiting Ragnarok, happily fight every day, get killed and revived by dinner time. Well, not Thursdays - Thursday involves dragons…

Magnus learns there is a deadline; if he doesn’t recover the sword and find the island where Fenris is tied up in the next few days, the wolf will escape and Ragnarok will happen next week. 

Luckily he is sprung from Valhalla by his good friends Blitz and Hearth. After this, a number of Norse myths are re-enacted, such as Thor’s fishing trip with a giant ox head for bait(with Magnus doing the fishing) and a dwarfish craft competition with the loser to be decapitated, with a shapeshifting horsefly interrupting one of the competitors(inspired by the story of Loki, Sif’s hair and the Dwarves). There is a reference to a “tug of war” between Loki and a goat, without the details, probably not a good idea in a children’s or even a YA book, though teens might find it amusing.

Really, the “hero/heroine is a child of some Important Person” is a trope very common in YA fantasy. 

Mostly it’s girls. In this fiction, the heroine, a normal American(usually American) girl, finds out that her father is a king of some supernatural realm - she is half a Faerie, a vampire princess, a half mermaid, a part angel, even a demon princess in one novel I read - a girl who sprouts horns and a tail when she gets angry at, say, a date who tried to grope her. I wish I could remember the title of that one!

She is usually told that there has been a marriage arranged between her and a fellow demon, Faerie, vampire or whatever, always a hot new boy at her school. If she doesn’t date him, there will be a war or the world will come to an end or both. And her father is always royalty, never a Faerie plumber or a demon factory hand… 

Still, I guess that’s what kids want to read! Girls do, anyway, in my experience.

I can’t help thinking of a fan story I read, “Fellowship Of The Thousands” which pokes fun at “Mary Sue” stories; on his way to Rivendell for the Council of Elrond, Boromir sees hundreds of young women falling from the sky. When he gets there, he encounters more, including daughters of Elrond that elf never knew he had - they’re Mary Sues, of course. An entire army of them leaves Rivendell with the  Fellowship. I read it on fanfiction.net, but it’s now available on Archive Of Our Own if you are curious.

And then there is the comic written by J.Michael Straczynski, (author of Babylon 5) in which Loki asks Spiderman/ Peter Parker to help him. His daughter Tess Black has had her body hijacked by an evil sorceress. “You have a daughter?” Peter says, amazed.

“Hundreds across the centuries,” the trickster god replies. “I’m a Norse god. It’s what we do.”

Well, more Greek gods than Norse do this, really, but it’s a nice line to describe what happens in YA fiction! 

And here is an article on this very subject! 

https://www.themarysue.com/books-like-percy-jackson/