The Big Picture

The Percy Jackson series, loved by fans of all ages, continues to resonate with readers old and new, thanks to its relatable characters and exciting stories. Author Rick Riordan’s return to the original trio of Percy, Annabeth, and Grover in The Chalice of the Gods is almost effortless, as he knows the characters like members of his own family. Keeping the Percy Jackson series as middle grade books is important to Riordan, who believes in providing exciting reading material for young readers during a crucial time in their lives.

If you’re of a certain age and weren’t into Harry Potter growing up, you were undoubtedly a Percy Jackson & the Olympians kid. The middle grade series about a young boy with ADHD who discovers he’s the demigod son of a Greek god has been a massive hit since its inception in 2005 with The Lightning Thief, spawning (among other things) multiple spinoffs, two films, a Broadway musical, and a forthcoming Disney+ series starring Walker Scobell. The series continues to resonate with fans around the world, whether they’re twentysomethings who grew up with Percy or are just discovering him for the first time — and that fact isn’t lost on author Rick Riordan, who originally created the beloved series as bedtime stories for his son.

The Percy Jackson universe has long since expanded beyond just the titular hero himself, now encompassing two spinoff series, The Heroes of Olympus and The Trials of Apollo, as well as a standalone novel, The Sun and the Star, co-written with Mark Oshiro. Such a literary legacy is no easy feat, but now, Riordan is back for the first time in fourteen years with a book focused solely on Percy and his two closest friends, Annabeth and Grover. The Chalice of the Gods, out now, follows a slightly more grown-up Percy as he prepares to go off to college — but of course, things are never easy for the son of Poseidon, as he must now obtain three letters of recommendations from the gods, which can only be received in exchange for quests.

It’s been a long time since audiences have been able to focus on just Percy and the core Lightning Thief gang, but it’s like no time at all has passed for Riordan, who says he knows the teen demigod “like a member of [his] family.” Fans new and old are able to jump in as Percy searches for the titular chalice, lost by the spacey immortal Ganymede, and Collider was lucky enough to sit down with Riordan ahead of the book’s release to discuss his return to the demigod that started it all for him.

In this interview, Riordan breaks down where the idea for The Chalice of the Gods came from, and what it was like coming back to Percy after so many spinoff adventures in his universe. We also talked a little about his writing process, Percy’s lasting legacy, and why it’s so important for young readers to have books that get them excited about reading, especially stories about heroes that look like them.

Check out the full interview below, and pick up a copy of The Chalice of the Gods wherever books are sold.

Image via Disney Hyperion

I just have to say, it is an honor to talk to you today. I’ve been reading Percy Jackson since I was in second grade. I have all my books up here on the shelf, and you’re the reason I’m a writer.

RIORDAN: Oh, that’s so sweet. Thank you. I’m honored.

Of course. I mean, you mean so much to so many people. Percy was the first book my brother ever read willingly at school. Do you get a lot of people, a lot of adults saying that they’ve grown up with Percy?

RIORDAN: I do. And it’s always so wonderful and so great to hear. It’s an honor to be a part of your growing up experience, and that is so cool.

I love that this book, Chalice of the Gods, is still middle grade. It hasn’t aged with readers, it hasn’t aged with Percy. Can you talk a little bit about why that’s important to you, to keep these novels as middle grade books?

RIORDAN: I mean, I think the selfish reason is that’s what I know best. I was a middle school teacher, and I think I have learned over the years that I write in some registers better than others. And my time in the classroom as a middle school teacher, my own kind of sense of humor, my sensibility, is very middle school. So I think that’s probably the reason that Percy Jackson did as well as it did, is that I was doing what they always tell you to do, I was writing what I knew and writing to an audience that I really kind of got. I have written other things. I started writing adult mysteries, and that was fine, but it didn’t click in the same way. So for me to keep Percy in that zone is to recognize that that’s what I do best.

But also, I just think it’s so important that middle school kids have things to read. It’s such a difficult time and it’s so crucial, and people at that age are right where, most of the time, they will either turn into readers or they won’t. And so to have books at that time that gets them excited about reading for fun, that’s just critical.

Yeah. I mean, like I said, my brother hated reading growing up. He never wanted anything to do with it. And we still have a copy of The Lightning Thief that he stole from me and took up into a tree to read, and that was the first time he ever got into reading.

RIORDAN: That’s awesome.

But obviously Percy hasn’t left you. We’ve been exploring other series, other places in this universe, but when it comes to going back to this original trio of Annabeth and Grover and Percy as we know them from The Lightning Thief, was it easy to fall back into that? Or did it take some thinking of, “Okay, I’ve been working on these other things and now I have to sort of backtrack back to these three?”

RIORDAN: Yeah, I mean, I was worried about it. I didn’t know if that would be something I could recapture or remember how to do. It had been fourteen years since I told a novel from the point of view of Percy. But as I started writing, I realized that Percy is so much who I am, so much based on my sons, so much a product of all the students I taught over the years, that I just know him like I know a member of my family. I mean, it was very easy remembering what his voice sounds like. I guess the only tricky thing was, what would it be like to write Percy as a senior in high school, a little bit older, thinking about problems on a different level?

But it hasn’t been that long since my own sons were in high school, getting ready for college. I remember how tough that was. It’s a time when everything’s in flux, and so I just drew on that and kind of projected Percy forward to seventeen, and hopefully the readers will like it and think I recaptured that enough that it sounds like Percy.

Image via Disney Hyperion

I think you did. Though, I will say reading it at twenty and going, “Wait, Percy’s still in high school?” was kind of a bit of a shock to my brain.

RIORDAN: Yeah, for sure.

I know why you’ve chosen to put this book out now, what the significance of the timing is, but can you walk me through a little bit of where the idea of Percy needing recommendation letters for college came from?

RIORDAN: Well, Becky and I, my wife and I, were out in Los Angeles right after the Fox merger with Disney. We had made the choice: okay, we’re going to give it one more shot to try to get a good adaptation made. So we did a lot of meetings, spent a lot of time out there, and in the process of trying to get Disney interested in rebooting Percy Jackson as a television show, one of the pitches that I made was, “Look, guys, you have already published all my books.” I mean, Disney’s been my publisher since The Lightning Thief. “What if I did something that I wasn’t planning on doing, and we sort of reimagined Percy in high school, did a new Percy Jackson series of books maybe where he’s trying to get into college?” And I sketched out three ideas for books and my editor loved them.

It turned out that I didn’t need that to get the TV show going. They were fine with that anyway. But since I already had the ideas and we were working on the TV show, I decided, well, I’ve got the ideas. I like the ideas. I think it’s funny, the idea that he’s not trying to save the world. He’s doing something even harder, trying to get into college. And so I talked to my editor and he said, “Look, why don’t [you] go ahead and write the first of these ideas and [you] can put it out with the TV show. One thing will help the other, and it’s kind of just a thank you to fans.” It’s like, thank you for waiting so long and for reading me all these years, and it’s a celebration. Let’s remember what it was like the very first time you met Percy Jackson.

Which I love so much. It makes me feel like a little kid again. But I want to get slightly nerdy and talk about your writing process. When you have an idea, when you’ve come up with this idea of Percy needing to get into college, how do you go about fleshing that out? Because as a writer myself, I always have a problem with, I have the idea, now how do I make it happen? Where’s the plot in this? How do you go about fleshing that out?

RIORDAN: Sure. Well, in the case of The Chalice of the Gods, for instance, so I had this overarching idea: okay, Percy’s going to need recommendation letters. Okay, that’s funny. Which gods have I not really talked about yet that might be interesting to talk about? And I don’t know why, but I came immediately to Ganymede, the cupbearer of the gods who has a really interesting backstory and a very complicated history. And I thought it would be really moving if Percy kind of learned how he related to this god. So I started playing around with that idea. Ganymede was stolen by Zeus when he was a young man, and he got all this baggage around that, and he’s given this job of pouring drinks forever, which doesn’t really sound all that great to me. So Percy will get to know him.

So I started with that, and okay, Percy meets Ganymede and Ganymede’s cup has been stolen. Hmm, who could have taken it? And I’m going to need some red herrings. So I think, okay, let’s identify maybe three acts to this like they do in Hollywood. Act one, act two, act three. So that’s kind of the way I did it. I said, okay, maybe in the first one he goes and he visits this goddess, and maybe in the second one he’s got to do a mission for this goddess. So I just take the pieces like a puzzle. I start kind of assembling them and I don’t have all the answers, but okay, I’m going to do this, this, and this, and then I just write the entire first draft. I just kind of let it happen. I know it’s going to be terrible. First drafts are always terrible. That’s okay. I just get the whole thing down and then I go back and revise and revise and revise.

I was talking to somebody earlier today and they said, “Wow, I really loved how you identified the theme of age and getting older and immortality, and it’s all circling around that. That was really nice.” And I said, “I wish I could tell you I did that on purpose.” I didn’t. It just kind of came out of the process, out of the subconscious.

Do you find that, whether it’s Percy or any of your other characters, they kind of go off and do their own thing and you’re like, “Wait, you weren’t supposed to go in that direction!”

RIORDAN: Yeah, all the time. All the time. And to an extent, that’s fine. I have to rein them in once in a while. But yeah, generally speaking, I wind them up and let them go and they’ll sort of do their own thing.

Image via Disney Hyperion

Obviously, you’re coming back to Percy after fourteen years, and the original five books have been out for quite some time, so in the process of writing this one, did you go back and reexamine those books, and is there anything you might change now? Or are you still really satisfied with those five books?

RIORDAN: Oh, I mean, I think every book is a product of the time in which it’s made and the artist’s state of mind and skill level and environment. So I mean, I always say that if I were doing any book I’ve ever written today, it would be very different because I’m not the same person I was fourteen, fifteen, sixteen years ago. I would bring a different point of view, and would it be better or worse? I don’t know, but I’m sure it would be different. Having said that, yes, I went back and looked at the older books just so I could remember Percy’s voice and what he’d been through. But honestly, I was doing that anyway because we were creating the TV show at the same time. So I was going back with The Lightning Thief already and picking it apart and figuring out how to turn it into episodes of the television show. At the same time I was going back and thinking about how to bring Percy forward in The Chalice of the Gods. So they dovetailed very nicely together.

I love that in your work, especially going forward, you’ve been such a massive champion of inclusivity, whether that’s LGBTQ stories or things like ADHD. But when you’re writing this compared to writing Percy back in 2005, did that kind of change the way that you looked at him as a character, or has it all just been, he’s always been kind of the same in your head?

RIORDAN: I think Percy’s probably more the same than he is different. I think Percy is Percy. I do think the world has changed quite a bit since he had his first adventure. And I do think that the main reason that I wrote the books is for my own son to feel seen and represented because he had learning differences. So that being the mission of Percy from the very first book, it’s always been important to me to make sure that we’re presenting a pluralistic society.

I mean, kids, there’s every kind of kid in the world, and they need to feel seen, and they need to feel like they can be part of whatever adventure or wonderful fantasy they’re reading. So that’s always been kind of very near and dear to my heart, and I have certainly tried to kind of expand on that over the years. I’m not perfect at it, obviously, and I have a lot of blind spots, but I rely on Becky, my wife, and I rely on my editors and sensitivity readers and friends and colleagues to kind of help me make that attempt a little bit bigger and make sure that kids feel like they can be demigods and heroes.

Yeah. I walked into Barnes & Noble the other day and your books and the Rick Riordan Presents imprint were all on this big table, and I was like, “When I was a kid, this didn’t exist.” And it’s wonderful to watch little girls go and pick it up and pick up Aru Shah or pick up one of your books and go, “Oh my God,” and get so excited about it. It’s so heartening as an adult reader to see kids really get into that.

Oh, that’s great to hear. Yeah, I agree. And that’s a reason that the Rick Riordan Presents imprint was so important to me is that, not only am I maybe not the right person to write certain mythologies, but the power of a young person picking up a book, and not only does the hero on the cover look like them, but the author also looks like them. That is such a powerful message, that “I could be this person too. I could tell my own stories.”

Image via Disney Hyperion

Chalice of the Gods is not your only release this year. I see on your mantle back there, you have The Sun and the Star, which you co-wrote with Mark Oshiro. So I don’t know what order you write your books in, or if you’re writing at the same time, but did working with Mark change the way you look at either writing Percy or anything else?

RIORDAN: Absolutely. Working with Mark was the first time I had collaborated on a novel with anyone. And again, it was a very nerve-wracking process in the sense that I didn’t know if I could do it. I didn’t know how to do it. Mark has a very different skillset as a writer. They are a more emotionally based writer, I think, and Mark is really good about exploring the feelings of the characters and giving them space to express them and talk through things. I am more of an action writer. I write scene to scene, and I always want the pages to keep turning. I never want any of my readers to feel like it is slowing down or they’re getting bored.

So putting those two things together was a challenge, but I did learn quite a bit from that. I think in the new book, especially The Chalice of the Gods, I allowed the characters to have more room to breathe and to sit and just eat dinner together and talk about things. And that is a direct result of The Sun and the Star, and I think that’s something that I learned from Mark, yeah.

Could we maybe see more co-authoring in your future, or is that sort of a one and done thing for you?

RIORDAN: Oh, well, I mean, I would love to do that. I don’t know what that would look like or when. It was a great experience working with Mark. It was fantastic, and I think we both agree that it was something we would be happy to do again. There’s a lot of things obviously going on, and so I don’t know when and how that might come about, but yeah, I would welcome that.

As far as Percy and the whole universe goes, to me, for lack of a better word, he feels a little bit like a god himself because he’s become part of this literary canon with characters like Harry Potter and Peter Pan and all of these other people. So to you, how does it feel knowing that Percy is going to outlast us all in that sense?

RIORDAN: Oh, more power to him. I mean, if Percy lasts a long time, that is fantastic. I mean, he’s already had a longer career than I ever anticipated. I mean, remember, he was just a bedtime story for my son back in 2002. And so the fact that we’re still talking about him in 2023 kind of blows my mind. I did not think that would be a thing. So I’ve already been more successful and happier with this career than I have ever had any right to be. So I’m very grateful for that. And if Percy is still speaking to kids fifty years from now, that’s fantastic. I hope that they get pleasure out of it and discover some fun Greek myths.

You said that Chalice of the Gods sort of began life as the beginning of a trilogy, and obviously you are spinning a lot of plates right now, but is there any chance that if we see more in the future, that you could tease what might be in more of those?

Probably can’t tease too many details, but yes, I mean, there’s certainly a chance that we will see the end of his senior year and how the process goes with the other recommendation letters. I did design it that way, so at some point, the hope is that I’ll get to present that to readers. I don’t think it’d be fair not to, having opened that box. I have to make good on that promise, but we shall see.