Demigods and Monsters by Rick Riordan Page A

could be visited by any ancient tourist; it was just offshore from the island of Cythera.” She also says that Pegasus lived in a real stable in Corinth.
    Similarly, Percy and his friends finally locate Nereus in The Titan’s Curse in San Francisco. The ancient sea god is disguised (of course) as a homeless man, fishing on a wharf. So if you want to find the old man of the sea himself, book a vacation in the Bay Area and check him out while you’re there.
    Much like the immortals of the Greek era, Riordan’s deities have a home base on Mount Olympus but can basically hang out anywhere they want. So Percy’s first encounter with Ares occurs outside a Denver, Colorado, diner. Ares, as far as we know in the series, doesn’t live in Denver. His presence in the Mile High City has one purpose: to talk to (and trick) Percy.

Do We Really Want to Bring Them a Housewarming Present?
    While wondering why these divinities have deigned to grace us with their presence, we might also ask ourselves if we should really welcome their presence here.
    The gods do provide convenient scapegoats. It would be nice to be able to blame all contemporary conflicts and injustices on the
whims of disinterested gods. Maybe the violence that bloats our cable news channels is not triggered by acts of ordinary mortals: Maybe monster hags and raging war gods are causing the whole mess to begin with. After his bus to the West Coast blows up not far from the George Washington Bridge in The Lightning Thief , Percy voices just this sentiment in his narration: “It’s nice to know there are Greek gods out there, because you have somebody to blame when things go wrong.”
    When the gods moved to New York, they came with plenty of baggage: their feuds, their wars, their Olympian-sized dysfunctional families; their inability to keep promises and vows (particularly of matrimony). Like true rock stars they’ve paraded onto the scene with their entire entourage: monsters in the form of Furies, Cyclopes, the Hydra, the Ophiotaurus; various spirits (naiads, dryads, and satyrs, among others); magical beings like the Gray Sisters and their taxi service; and let’s not forget the Oracle. In fact, the whole assortment—or at least a generous sampling—of weirdoes that populated the mythical realms of Ancient Greece turn up in the course of the series. 21 And these weirdoes don’t just “turn up” and make cameo appearances. Far from being window dressing or sidekicks, this motley crew provides much of the action on all of Percy’s quests. 22

    In light of all the baggage these gods bring with them, I find myself wondering, is the presence of these gods such a good thing? The answer is, that’s a really bad question. First of all, in the world of Percy Jackson and the Olympians, they are already here, and are having too good a time to plan on leaving soon. Secondly, when it comes to sending these inconvenient neighbors back to where they came from, we can’t. We, and possibly those very gods themselves, just don’t have the choice.

It All Boils Down to This Thing Called Free Will
    Freedom of choice is something we usually take for granted—until we look a little more closely at what it, and free will, really means. At first glance it means you can decide to take this road or that; you can do your homework or not; if you’re Percy, you can decide to search for Zeus’ lightning bolt or not.
    But as it turns out, the whole idea of freedom of choice and free will is one of those things that philosophers have pondered probably since the first cave men gathered around the campfire and began to chew over life’s important questions—the kind of questions with no definite answer, like what came first, the chicken or the egg? No one really knows.
    Do we have the ability to choose our direction in life or does fate or destiny choose our path for us? The answer is both. We almost always have