At the prompting of my players in my “Demigods of Daelen” Dungeons and Dragons campaign, I bought and started reading the first five books in the Percy Jackson series. I’ve only made it through three of them so far (I have had a lot of other stuff going on since I ordered these a couple months ago), but each one wrapped up in a single reading session (not counting me reading a the first book a chapter at a time for exactly two chapters before I just dug in and read the whole thing). They’re light, fun books to read. There’s not a lot of tension in them, at least not yet, though there’s plenty of spirit. All of this combined makes it incredibly easy to get swept up in the story and the worldbuilding is light but deliberate enough that there’s never really a point that takes me out of the story, even when someone hops in an old plane that somehow has a gun loaded with live ammunition and uses it to shoot stuff. The whole series, up through book three at least, does a good job of brushing off the strange intersections of the fantastical and the modern without breaking my suspension of disbelief, and I can see why so many people have these books as a major influence in their childhood or teen years. If I’d read these books as a child, I’d probably feel similarly. Hell, I might even still like them because the author hasn’t done anything absolutely horrible like becoming the loudest, vilest, and most harmful terf currently living, unlike some other franchises from my childhood. Still, while I can absolutely enjoy some decent Young Adult fiction, I’m not sure this franchise is the helpful touchstone my players think it is.