All 11 Percy Jackson books (including Chalice of the Gods), ranked worst to best
Rick Riordan's Percy Jackson books are all excellent, but some are better than others. Let's rank every mainline Percy Jackson book in the Riordanverse.
When Rick Riordan’s novel Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief first hit shelves in 2005, it would have been almost inconceivable to imagine the heights to which that book, and the books that followed, would reach. Yet with a Disney+ TV show and a sixth Percy Jackson and the Olympians book now out, Rick Riordan’s stories about the Greek demigod continue to delight fans 18 years later.
The premise is simple: the Greek gods are still alive and kicking, and their children born to human parents are known as demigods. These demigod children are sent to Camp Half Blood, where they are taught about their ancestry, trained in warfare, and go on quests to save the world from monsters wreaking havoc on humanity. As well as being a training ground, Camp Half Blood is a safe haven, the one place where demigods are safe from said monsters. The story picks up with our protagonist, Percy Jackson, learning that he is the son of the sea god Poseidon, and things pick up from there.
There are six books in the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series, but over the years, Riordan has expanded the world with additional series along with companion books and short stories, mixing together Greek, Roman, Norse, and Egyptian mythology.
While all of these stories interlink, the Heroes of Olympus series is a direct sequel to Percy Jackson and the Olympians. Riordan used the sequel series to bring Roman mythology into the world, using Roman gods and Roman demigods to retroactively plug some of the potential plot holes in the Olympians books.
There are five books in each series, for a total of 10, plus a new book that's starting a new cycle. But how do they stack up against each other? That’s what we’re here to decide. So, without further ado, here are my personal rankings of all 11 Percy Jackson and the Olympians and Heroes of Olympus books, from worst to best. (It should be noted that I really enjoyed all 11 of these books… but a natural hierarchy was still formed in my mind!)