Monster
After a year spent trying to prevent a catastropic war among the Greek gods, Percy Jackson finds his seventh-grade school year unnervingly quiet. His biggest problem is dealing with his new friend, Tyson--a six-foot-three, mentally challenged homeless kid who follows Percy everywhere, making it hard for Percy to have any "normal" friends. But things don't stay quiet for long. Percy soon discovers there is trouble at Camp Half-Blood: The magical borders which protect Half-Blood Hill have been poisoned by a mysterious enemy, and the only safe haven for demigods is on the verge of being overrun by mythological monsters. To save the camp, Percy needs the help of his best friend, Grover, who has been taken prisoner by the Cyclops Polyphemus on an island somewhere in the Sea of Monsters--the dangerous waters Greek heroes have sailed for millenia--only today, the Sea of Monsters goes by a new name...the Bermuda Triangle. Now Percy and his friends--Grover, Annabeth, and Tyson--must retrieve the Golden Fleece from the Island of the Cyclopes by the end of the summer or Camp Half-Blood will be destroyed. But first, Percy will learn a stunning new secret about his family--one that makes
Themes & atmosphere
What you might want to know about Monster
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
Sixteen-year-old Steve Harmon is on trial as a possible lookout for a Harlem bodega robbery that ended in a death. He writes the trial as a screenplay from his cell, while quietly trying to figure out who he is.
Multiple novels share this title. The most commonly searched is Monster by Walter Dean Myers (1999), a YA novel about a 16-year-old on trial for murder, told in screenplay format. The metadata above lists Rick Riordan; Monster by Riordan would be a different unrelated work.
Yes. Monster won the inaugural Michael L. Printz Award for excellence in YA literature in 2000 and was a National Book Award finalist. It is widely taught in middle and high schools.
Monster is 282 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, Monster takes most readers 4 to 6 hours to finish.
Monster is a standalone novel by Rick Riordan, not part of a series.
Monster is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.