Percy Jackson's Greek Heroes

Narrated by Percy Jackson, a modern-day demigod and son of the Greek god Poseidon, this book retells the stories of twelve heroes from ancient Greek mythology. Percy explains that a publisher bribed him with pizza and blue jelly beans to write these tales, which he frames as both entertainment and cautionary lessons. His voice is irreverent and humorous, but the myths are rendered in full, from triumphant quests to tragic endings.

Percy begins with Perseus, his namesake. When the Oracle of Delphi warns King Acrisius of Argos that his daughter Danaë's son will kill him, Acrisius imprisons her, but Zeus visits her as golden light and she gives birth to Perseus. Acrisius sets mother and child adrift in a wooden box; they wash ashore on Seriphos, where a fisherman named Dictys rescues them. Dictys's brother, King Polydectes, manipulates Perseus into swearing on the River Styx, the most binding oath in the Greek world, to bring back Medusa's head. Equipped by Hermes and Athena with winged sandals, a mirror-polished shield, and a cap of invisibility, Perseus decapitates Medusa using the shield to avoid her petrifying gaze. He rescues Princess Andromeda from a sea monster, marries her, petrifies Polydectes, and claims the throne of Argos. Years later, at athletic games, he accidentally kills Acrisius with a discus, fulfilling the prophecy.

Psyche is a mortal princess so beautiful that people abandon Aphrodite's temples to worship her. The enraged goddess orders her son Eros to curse Psyche, but Eros falls in love with her instead. Carried by the west wind to a hidden palace, Psyche marries an invisible husband who forbids her to see him. Jealous sisters convince her the husband is a monster. She lights a lamp and discovers he is Eros; a drop of hot oil burns him, and he flees. Psyche surrenders to Aphrodite, who assigns four impossible tasks. For each, sympathetic gods help in secret. On her return from the Underworld, Psyche opens a forbidden box containing a magical deathlike sleep and collapses. Eros brings her to Olympus, where Zeus makes her immortal over Aphrodite's grudging objection.

Phaethon, son of Helios the sun Titan, visits his father's palace after being mocked about his parentage. Helios rashly swears on the Styx to grant any favor, and Phaethon demands to drive the sun chariot. He loses control, scorching Africa into desert and freezing parts of Europe. Zeus blasts him from the sky. His body falls into a lake in northern Italy, where it boils eternally, and his seven grieving sisters are transformed into amber-weeping trees.

Otrera founds the Amazons, a nation of warrior women. Percy explains that women in Bronze Age Greece had no rights and could be killed for disobedience. Otrera secretly trains women to fight, leads a revolt, and migrates her tribe to modern Turkey. She falls in love with the war god Ares and builds temples, including the famous temple of Artemis at Ephesus, later one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. When the god Dionysus invades, the Amazons survive only because Artemis intervenes at the very temple Otrera built.

Daedalus, exiled from Athens for murdering his talented nephew, works for King Minos of Crete. He builds the Labyrinth, a shifting maze to imprison the Minotaur, a creature half-bull and half-human born of a divine curse on Queen Pasiphaë. Daedalus himself is then locked inside as a captive inventor. He escapes with his son Icarus on wax-joined bronze wings, but Icarus flies too close to the sun, the wax melts, and he plunges to his death. Daedalus reaches Sicily, where he hides until Minos tracks him down; the local princesses kill Minos, and Daedalus vanishes.

Theseus, son of either King Aegeus of Athens or Poseidon, travels to Athens at seventeen and defeats six villains along the way. Medea, a sorceress married to the aging Aegeus, tries to poison Theseus at dinner, but Aegeus recognizes his own sword and saves the boy. Theseus volunteers as tribute to the Minotaur in Crete. Princess Ariadne gives him a ball of thread to navigate the Labyrinth and the creature's true name, Asterion, to confuse it. Theseus kills the Minotaur and escapes, but on the voyage home he abandons Ariadne and forgets to change the ship's black sails to white. Aegeus sees the black sails from a tower, believes his son dead, and leaps into the sea, thereafter called the Aegean. Theseus becomes king but self-destructs: He kills his own son Hippolytus in a jealous rage and is thrown off a cliff on the island of Skyros.

Atalanta, abandoned at birth and raised by a she-bear, becomes the fiercest huntress in Greece. She draws first blood in the hunt for the Kalydonian Boar, a monster sent by the goddess Artemis to punish the local king. Forced by her father to accept suitors, she decrees that any man must outrun her or die. Hippomenes wins the race using three irresistible golden apples from Aphrodite. They marry but forget to thank the goddess, who arranges their desecration of a shrine of Zeus. Zeus transforms them both into lions.

Bellerophon, the accident-prone prince of Corinth and secret son of Poseidon, tames the winged horse Pegasus with a golden bridle from Athena. Falsely accused of assault by Queen Anteia of Argos, he is sent to Lycia with a sealed death warrant. King Iobates assigns him to slay the Chimera, a fire-breathing hybrid monster, which Bellerophon kills by choking its flames with molten lead. Iobates eventually names him heir. Years later, Bellerophon tries to fly to Mount Olympus, but Zeus sends a gadfly to startle Pegasus, and Bellerophon falls to his death.

Percy recounts shorter tales as well. Cyrene, a huntress from the Lapiths, a mythical Thessalian tribe, attracts Apollo by fighting a lion bare-handed; he takes her to Africa, where she founds a city. Orpheus, the greatest musician alive, descends to the Underworld to reclaim his dead wife Eurydice. Hades agrees to release her if Orpheus does not look back. Steps from daylight, he turns, and Eurydice dissolves. He is later torn apart by the maenads, frenzied followers of Dionysus.

The longest chapter covers Hercules, son of Zeus and the mortal Alcmene. The jealous goddess Hera drives him into a rage in which he kills his wife and children. The Oracle commands twelve labors for his cousin, High King Eurystheus. These include strangling the invulnerable Nemean Lion, slaying the nine-headed Hydra, capturing monstrous beasts, cleaning the Augean Stables by diverting a river, tricking the Titan Atlas into retrieving golden apples from the Garden of the Hesperides, a mythical garden at the western edge of the world, and descending to the Underworld to borrow the three-headed guard dog Cerberus. After the labors, Hercules marries Deianeira. A dying centaur, a creature half-man and half-horse, tricks Deianeira into collecting its poisonous blood as a supposed love potion. When Hercules takes a captive princess, Deianeira smears the blood on his shirt. It burns him alive, and Zeus elevates his spirit to Olympus as an immortal god.

The final story follows Jason and the Golden Fleece. The usurper King Pelias challenges Jason, the dispossessed heir of Iolcus, to retrieve the magical Fleece from Colchis on the Black Sea. Jason builds the ship Argo and recruits fifty heroes as Argonauts. The voyage brings constant peril: friendly-fire battles in a nighttime fog, lost crewmembers, and the Clashing Rocks, massive cliffs that slam together at the entrance to the Black Sea. In Colchis, King Aeetes's sorceress daughter Medea falls in love with Jason through divine manipulation and helps him yoke fire-breathing bulls, defeat skeleton warriors, and steal the Fleece. During the escape, Medea kills and dismembers her own brother to delay pursuit. Back in Iolcus, Pelias refuses to yield the throne, so Medea tricks his daughters into killing him with a fake rejuvenation spell. The city turns against them. In Corinth, Jason breaks his oath by agreeing to marry Princess Creusa. Medea sends Creusa a poisonous gown that kills both the princess and her father, murders her own two sons, and escapes in a dragon-drawn chariot. Jason wanders Greece alone until the rotting Argo's prow collapses on him and kills him.

Percy closes with tongue-in-cheek morals: Don't abandon your children, don't desecrate a god's temple, and above all, avoid Hera.