Percy Jackson and the Olympians in order: the books are numbered 1 to 7 — don't read them that way
The spines say one through seven, and the box set agrees. Follow them straight through and you'll be reading about Percy's senior year before you know who half his friends are.
Disney+ brings Percy Jackson and the Olympians back for season 3 on November 20, adapting The Titan's Curse, per Disney's announcement. That's usually the moment new fans go looking for the books, and Rick Riordan's main Percy series now officially runs to seven novels.
Five of them came out between 2005 and 2009. The other two arrived in 2023 and 2024, and they don't pick up where book 5 leaves off. Mild spoilers for the wider series from here.
The seven numbered books
Here's the series as it's printed:
- 1. The Lightning Thief (2005): Percy, 12, finds out he's a son of Poseidon and gets accused of stealing Zeus's master bolt.
- 2. The Sea of Monsters (2006): A quest for the Golden Fleece to save Camp Half-Blood.
- 3. The Titan's Curse (2007): The one Disney+ is adapting now.
- 4. The Battle of the Labyrinth (2008): The war moves underground.
- 5. The Last Olympian (2009): The finale of the original series.
- 6. The Chalice of the Gods (2023): Percy, now a high school senior, needs three recommendation letters from the gods to get into New Rome University. Ganymede offers the first one if Percy finds his stolen chalice.
- 7. Wrath of the Triple Goddess (2024): Letter number two means pet-sitting the goddess Hecate's polecat, Gale, and giant mastiff, Hecuba, over Halloween week.
Books 6 and 7 are the first two of the Senior Year Adventures, which Riordan has said will be a trilogy. They're set years after book 5.
The problem with books 6 and 7
Between The Last Olympian and The Chalice of the Gods, Riordan wrote a whole second series, The Heroes of Olympus (2010 to 2014), and Percy is one of its leads. The Senior Year books are set after it and before The Trials of Apollo (2016 to 2020).
Read book 6 straight after book 5 and you skip the five novels that explain its premise. New Rome is the Roman demigod city introduced in The Son of Neptune, the second Heroes book, and the story of how Percy got there is one of that series' big twists. The Chalice of the Gods treats all of it as old news, along with where Percy and Annabeth's relationship stands by then.
The numbers on the spines tell you when Riordan wrote about Percy. They don't tell you when it happened to him.
The order that actually works
For a first read, with spoilers kept to a minimum:
- Percy Jackson and the Olympians, books 1–5: The Lightning Thief through The Last Olympian.
- The Heroes of Olympus, books 1–5: The Lost Hero through The Blood of Olympus.
- Percy Jackson and the Olympians, books 6–7: The Chalice of the Gods, then Wrath of the Triple Goddess.
- The Trials of Apollo, books 1–5: The Hidden Oracle through The Tower of Nero.
You can also read Trials of Apollo before books 6 and 7, since that's the publication order. It just means meeting a later version of Percy's world and then stepping back to his senior year.
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The new books that fit between 1 and 2
There's one more wrinkle. On September 29, Riordan launched a new four-book series, Camp Half-Blood, co-written with a different author each time and set between The Lightning Thief and The Sea of Monsters, per the AP. The first, The Wild Zone, was written with Annabelle Oh and follows Katie Kim, a daughter of Ares, into a forbidden stretch of forest at camp.
"Four new demigods arrived at camp that fall."
— Rick Riordan, on his website
Percy, Annabeth and Grover are away for this one, and Riordan says he designed it to stand on its own. Book two, written with Kyle Lukoff, brings in Aphrodite and a camp dance, and Publishers Weekly reports a new book every six months, with Jade Adia and Pablo Cartaya writing the last two.
Chronologically, these slot in after book 1. In practice they're safe any time after it, which makes The Wild Zone a good pick for anyone who just finished season 1 or 2 on Disney+.
Our read
Read the seven numbered books in the order 1 to 5, then Heroes of Olympus, then 6 and 7. The Senior Year books are a victory lap, and they work best once you know what Percy survived to get to senior year.
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