As the Harry Potter series was drawing to a close, bookstores waited with bated breath for the next commercial phenomenon. Before Twilight could hog the spotlight, Rick Riordan scraped some off from J.K. Rowling’s plate.

In 2005, Riordan published The Lightning Thief, turning an all new generation of kids godly, albeit not in the Christian sense. A revisionist account of Greek mythology, the popular children’s book sold 275,000 copies upon publication.

First in the five-novel series Percy Jackson and the Olympians, The Lightning Thief introduces readers to the eponymous 12-year old hero, raised in New York City by his mother and her abusive husband. Diagnosed with attention deficit disorder and dyslexia, Percy has been expelled from six schools and attends a private one for juvenile delinquents.

After a near-fatal encounter with a harpy at school, Percy learns he is actually Perseus, the half-human son of Poseidon on high. Not only that but the Empire State Building is actually Mount Olympus and the Underworld lies beneath a Los Angeles recording studio.

If readers could transcend the Harry Potter formula, The Lightning Thief has to be bliss on paper. According to the New York Times, it is “perfectly paced, with electrifying moments chasing each other like heartbeats.”

Eventually Percy’s mother enrolls him in Camp Half-Blood, where he brushes elbows with fellow demigods. Here he becomes campmates with Athena’s daughter, makes friends with a satyr, and commence a testy journey of self-discovery. No less than Hercules’ centaur-mentor, Chiron, acts as camp counselor. He trains his wards to defend against the Titans, among other caustic immortals intent on destroying demigods. For his first task as a half-blood, Percy must return Zeus’ thunderbolt and prevent doomsday in America.

At camp, Percy is vindicated. As campmates would assure him, his ADHD comprises his warrior reflexes, giving him heightened senses necessary for battle. As for his dyslexia, it comes handy for reading ancient Greek.

Percy Jackson and the Olympians’ second installment, The Sea of Monsters, dropped in 2006. It was followed by The Titan’s Curse in 2007, The Battle of the Labyrinth in 2008, and The Last Olympian in 2009.

In 2007, former Harry Potter director Chris Columbus signed on for the film version of The Lightning Thief, set for release in 2010. In addition, BookPeople puts up real-life Camp Half-Bloods during summer. Hyperion, the books’ publisher, annually sponsors underprivileged students to attend such camps.