With a new adaptation already on the way, Rick Riordan has announced a new Percy Jackson book
This will be the first mainline Percy Jackson book in over a decade
It’s 2022, and being in the Percy Jackson business is good. Disney+ is putting together a new series adaptation of the best-selling children’s fantasy books about a demigod learning about his destiny and all the other gods and god-type people who have opinions about it, with Walker Scobell playing Percy himself (replacing Logan Lerman from the movies). Now, original Percy Jackson author Rick Riordan is cashing in by announcing a brand new Percy Jackson book—the first in over a decade. (Is it “cashing in” if you write a successful series of books that is now getting a second stab at an adaptation, and you decide to write another book? Or is it just smart business sense?)
Riordan posted about the new book on Twitter (via The Hollywood Reporter), saying it will be titled Percy Jackson And The Olympians: The Chalice Of The Gods. It will be available on September 26, 2023. This will be the sixth book in the series, with the last book (The Last Olympian) having been released in 2009. That’s if you don’t count the technically standalone sequel series, though, called The Heroes Of Olympus, which wrapped up in 2014 with The Blood Of Olympus.
The fact that this new book as Percy Jackson And The Olympians in the title means it will be connected to the original series, with Riordan saying in an interview with Publishers Weekly that it will be about Percy getting ready to go to New Rome University and getting recommendation letters from gods by doing heroic quests. Riordan says it will mostly take place in New York, and rather than being about a “world-ending adventure,” it will be “a day in the life of a demigod.” He also says that there won’t be a big tonal shift as compared to the other books, even though Percy is older now, so it just sounds like it’s designed to be a chill time for fans of the series—and if you happen to buy it because there’s a new Disney+ series, that’s cool too.