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'Percy Jackson and the Sea of Monsters': Your catch-up guide to the book series and movies

Wondering why your child is begging to go to the multiplex to learn about Greek gods? Here's a guide to the "Percy Jackson" book series by Rick Riordan and its movie adaptations.

5. 'Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters'

Murray Close/20th Century Fox/AP

  • By Molly Driscoll Staff Writer

The second movie removes the "& the Olympians" from the title and has also experienced a small bit of cast shuffling, with actor Anthony Head replacing Pierce Brosnan as centaur Chiron and Nathan Fillion stepping in for actor Dylan Neal as Hermes. "Monsters" also had its release date moved, having been originally scheduled for a March 2013 release.

Reviews of the movie have again been mixed. Los Angeles Times writer Gary Goldstein called it a "serviceable, limber follow-up" and called one special-effects section "fantastic," while Boston Globe critic Tom Russo wrote the film was "fairly engaging stuff, unabashed 'Harry Potter' knockoff" but added that the movie has "thin emotion." New York Times writer Andy Webster said unfavorable comparisons to a boy wizard came to mind. "The director, Thor Freudenthal ... is savvy with effects and keeps his young cast on point," he wrote. "But it doesn’t begin to approach the biting adolescent tension of the Harry Potter movies."

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Mark Sappenfield
Editor

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