Percy Jackson and the Olympians: the story so far

Percy Jackson was twelve, dyslexic and on his sixth school in six years when his maths teacher turned into a Fury and tried to kill him on a museum trip. Mr Brunner handed him a pen that was a sword, his friend Grover turned out to be a satyr, and a Minotaur took his mother off the road outside Camp Half-Blood.

The camp was full of children of the Greek gods, who are alive, living in America, and inattentive parents. Poseidon claimed Percy during a game of capture the flag, which was a problem, because the three eldest gods had sworn not to father children and Zeus's master bolt had just been stolen. Zeus blamed Percy.

He went west with Annabeth Chase, daughter of Athena, and with Grover, to reach Hades before the summer solstice turned into a war. They got past Medusa, the Lotus Casino, and a war god called Ares who handed them a rucksack and a lift. In the Underworld, Hades wanted his own stolen helm back, and the master bolt turned out to have been in Ares's bag the whole way.

Percy beat Ares on a beach in Santa Monica, returned both weapons, and got his mother home. Then Luke Castellan, the camp's best swordsman and the nearest thing Percy had to an older brother, admitted he had stolen them. He was working for Kronos, the Titan the gods had cut to pieces and thrown into Tartarus, who had been talking to him in dreams and slowly putting himself back together. Luke left a scorpion to finish Percy and walked away.

Thalia's pine, the tree holding the magical border around Camp Half-Blood, had been poisoned, and monsters were walking in. Chiron was sacked on suspicion of doing it and replaced by Tantalus, whose only real interest was punishing campers.

Percy also acquired a half-brother. Tyson, the homeless boy from his school, was a young Cyclops and another son of Poseidon, which the rest of the camp found funny until it stopped being funny.

The cure was the Golden Fleece, sitting in the Sea of Monsters, which is the Bermuda Triangle. Tantalus gave the quest to Clarisse La Rue. Percy, Annabeth and Tyson went anyway, both for the Fleece and to get Grover out of the Cyclops Polyphemus's cave, where he was stalling by pretending to be a bride.

On the way they boarded the Princess Andromeda, Luke's cruise ship full of monsters and recruited demigods, and Percy got Luke to admit he had poisoned the tree, which cleared Chiron. They survived Charybdis, escaped Circe's island on a stolen pirate ship, and took the Fleece off Polyphemus.

Percy handed the Fleece to Clarisse so she would get the credit for carrying it home. Hung on the pine, it healed the tree, and then it kept going. It pulled Thalia Grace, daughter of Zeus, out of that tree alive. Kronos had wanted precisely that: a second child of the Big Three, old enough to matter, for a prophecy that until then had only one possible candidate.

Grover called Percy, Annabeth and Thalia to a boarding school in Maine to collect two half-bloods, Bianca and Nico di Angelo. The vice principal was a manticore, and in the fight Annabeth went over a cliff with him. Artemis arrived with her Hunters, took Bianca into their ranks, and went off alone after a monster she said could bring Olympus down.

Then Artemis vanished too. The Oracle sent five: Zoë Nightshade, Bianca, Grover, Thalia and Phoebe. Percy followed without permission. He had been quietly feeding an Ophiotaurus in the camp lake and calling it Bessie, and Bessie was the monster in question, whose entrails burned could destroy the gods.

They crossed the country, killed the Nemean lion, and reached the Junkyard of the Gods, where Bianca went back for a figurine for her brother, woke a discarded prototype of Talos, and died stopping it.

At Mount Othrys, Zoë turned out to be Atlas's daughter, and Atlas had tricked Artemis into taking the weight of the sky so that he could walk free. Thalia fought Luke and put him off the side of the mountain. Percy held the sky himself long enough for Artemis to get out, and between them they forced Atlas back under it. Zoë died of Atlas's blow and her mother set her in the stars.

Thalia joined the Hunters and stopped ageing, which left exactly one child of the Big Three for the prophecy. Percy told Nico his sister was dead. The ground opened at the boy's feet, and he named his own father: Hades.

Luke's army meant to come into Camp Half-Blood through Daedalus's Labyrinth, which had gone on growing under America along with the West. Percy went in with Annabeth, Grover and Tyson to reach Daedalus first and stop him handing Ariadne's string to Luke.

Rachel Elizabeth Dare, a mortal girl who could see straight through the Mist, ended up guiding them, because nobody else could read the maze. They freed the hundred-handed Briares, and found that Nico di Angelo was down there too, raising the dead and being steered by the ghost of King Minos towards a plan to trade one soul for his sister's.

An explosion at Mount St Helens threw Percy onto Ogygia, where Calypso was serving out an ancient punishment, cursed to love every hero washed up on her shore and never keep one. He left.

Quintus, the new sword instructor at camp, turned out to be Daedalus himself, hiding inside an automaton body, and he had already given Luke what he wanted. Grover found Pan, who had been dying for centuries, and Pan gave himself away into all of them before he went.

Kronos finished rebuilding himself inside Luke's body. The fight came out of the maze and into the camp, and Daedalus arrived with Briares and his hellhound to help hold it, then let Nico release him so he could finally die, which brought the Labyrinth down with him.

Percy turned fifteen, and Nico told him there was one way to face Luke on level terms, and it ran through the River Styx.

Percy took Nico's route and bathed in the River Styx, and came out with the curse of Achilles: invulnerable everywhere except one small point on his back, which he told nobody about. Nico had led him there partly to get his own answers out of Hades, and admitted it.

Kronos sailed for New York wearing Luke's body. Charles Beckendorf died blowing up the Princess Andromeda. Morpheus and Hecate put every mortal in Manhattan to sleep, and roughly forty demigods held the city alone while the gods fought Typhon across the country and would not break off.

There was a spy in the camp. Silena Beauregard, daughter of Aphrodite, had been feeding Luke information since before the war began. She died in Clarisse's armour, leading the Ares cabin into a fight they had been boycotting, and confessed before she went. Sixteen campers were killed. Annabeth took a poisoned blade meant for the one spot on Percy's back.

Percy talked Poseidon into abandoning his own besieged palace and coming. Ethan Nakamura turned on Kronos at the last and was killed for it. In the throne room, Luke surfaced through the Titan long enough to take Annabeth's dagger and drive it into the single place on his own body that could be wounded, which ended them both.

Percy refused godhood and asked for three things instead, sworn on the Styx: that every god claim their children by thirteen, that cabins be built for the minor gods and for Hades, and that nobody be punished for having sided with Kronos. Rachel became the new Oracle and immediately spoke the next Great Prophecy, about seven half-bloods. Percy and Annabeth finally stopped pretending.

Percy wanted to go to New Rome University with Annabeth, and discovered he technically should not exist. The three eldest gods had sworn off children, so no arrangement covered him. Zeus named a price: three letters of recommendation from three gods, each earned by doing that god a favour.

Ganymede, Zeus's cup-bearer, answered first. Someone had stolen the chalice of the gods, the cup that makes whoever drinks from it immortal, and if Zeus found out before his mother Rhea's brunch, Ganymede was finished.

Percy, Annabeth and Grover worked through the suspects. Hebe, goddess of youth, was innocent. Iris pointed them at the real thief in exchange for having her staff cleansed: Geras, the god of old age.

Geras was not hiding. He wrestled Percy, and Percy could not beat him by force, because nobody beats old age. He won by putting his arms round him and accepting it, and Geras handed the chalice back out of respect.

Getting it to Ganymede meant walking into Zeus's palace mid-brunch under Annabeth's invisibility cap, with Grover causing a scene and a quiet assist from Athena, who had her own reasons. Ganymede wrote the letter. One down, two to go.

Percy needed a second letter for New Rome University, and Hecate had a job going: house-sit her mansion over Halloween week and look after her two pets, Hecuba the hellhound and Gale the polecat. She was specific about what would happen to him if anything went wrong.

Percy brought Annabeth and Grover. Grover drank something he found in the house, which is the sort of thing that happens in a house belonging to the goddess of magic, and by the time it wore off the mansion was wrecked and both animals were loose somewhere in New York City.

Getting them back meant chasing a hellhound with a very long memory, because Hecuba had been Queen of Troy before she was a dog, and a polecat who had been a formidable potion-maker before Hecate made her one. It also meant naiads with old grudges, a house full of ghosts, and being turned into shapes none of them wanted along the way. Hecate kept appearing in her three aspects, maiden, mother and crone, and none of the three had come to help.

They got the pets home and put the mansion back together. When Hecate returned, Percy told her the truth about the week rather than covering for himself, and she wrote the letter anyway, then stayed for the Halloween party. Two down, one to go.