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The Lightning Thief started out as a bedtime story for Rick Riordan's oldest son. After writing adult mysteries for some time, Riordan decided to try his hand at children's fiction. Making up a tale for his son was the perfect place to begin.

The story takes ancient Greek mythology and brings it into the modern world. Riordan creates a here-and-now in which gods and creatures of myth and legend are still active, though perhaps not in the ways we would expect. The Greek gods' palace on Mount Olympus has shifted to the new center of Western civilization the United States, but the gods still get up to their old tricks. They still fight, and fall in love, and have children with mortal humans.

The story of one half-human, half-god boy, Perseus Jackson, is the basis of The Lightning Thief. Riordan takes a fantastic what-if idea “what if the Greek gods still existed and had half-divine children in the modern world?” and creates a rousing adventure tale of friendship, courage, and doing what's right.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Nicole has been writing since she could make letters with a pencil, and has been making a living at it for more than ten years. She has gone back to school too many times, studying archaeology, folklore, writing and visual art. She writes fiction under several pen names, and also does printmaking, book arts, and photography. She's an avid amateur natural historian with a particular fascination for things that fly, whether it's birds, bats or insects. And if it's possible to be both a luddite, with a love for the low-tech, and a technophile, with a fascination for everything new and shiny, Nicole is both. She reads too many books, plays too many video games, and watches too much anime.

Quicklet on Rick Riordan's The Lightning Thief