Rick Riordan Books

Rick Riordan was a middle-school teacher in San Antonio telling his son bedtime stories about Greek gods when Percy Jackson showed up, a twelve-year-old with ADHD, dyslexia, and a sword. The Lightning Thief, published in 2005, turned those stories into one of the bestselling children's series ever written, and Riordan's genius was the premise's elasticity: the Olympians never went away, they just moved with Western civilization, gods running businesses in Manhattan, monsters in the gym class. Mythology stopped being homework and became a scavenger hunt hiding inside the modern world.

The empire that followed is enormous: five Percy Jackson books, the Heroes of Olympus sequel series, the Kane Chronicles for Egyptian mythology, Magnus Chase for Norse, the Trials of Apollo, and, through the Rick Riordan Presents imprint, a deliberate handing of the mythology-adventure keys to authors from other cultures, which quietly became one of the most effective diversity projects in publishing. The Disney+ adaptation, with Riordan closely involved after two film versions he memorably disowned, finally gave the books the screen treatment fans wanted.

So why is he on a romantasy shelf? Because he is the feeder system. The generation that grew up on Percy and Annabeth, on demigod training camps, quests, prophecies, and found-family cabins, aged directly into Fourth Wing's war college and ACOTAR's courts. The academy structure, the powers-that-mark-you-special, the banter-first romance, the slow-burn built across five books: an entire cohort of romantasy readers learned those pleasures at Camp Half-Blood first. Percabeth walked so enemies-to-lovers could run.

The books themselves keep their romance strictly middle-grade sweet, first crushes and hand-holding at the campfire, which makes Riordan the rare zero-pepper author on a shelf full of chili symbols. What they deliver instead is voice: Percy's narration remains one of the funniest in popular fiction, and the books read aloud better than almost anything in the business.

Start with The Lightning Thief, read in publication order, and do not skip Heroes of Olympus even though the POV multiplies. If you are an adult romantasy reader wondering whether to revisit: yes, they hold up, and the nostalgia hits harder than expected. The Riordan books we track are below.

The screen momentum keeps building. The Disney+ series covered The Sea of Monsters in season two and returns this November with season three, based on The Titan's Curse and introducing the di Angelo siblings, whose arrival longtime readers know to brace for. Riordan and his wife Becky remain executive producers, which is a large part of why the show keeps the books' voice intact where the films lost it. Meanwhile he has kept writing Percy himself: The Chalice of the Gods and Wrath of the Triple Goddess follow Percy, Annabeth, and Grover through senior year of high school, lighter and funnier than the war-arc books, written with obvious affection for the original readers who are now adults and pleasantly unbothered about it.

A few things even longtime fans miss. Before Percy, Riordan wrote the Tres Navarre mysteries, adult crime novels set in Texas that collected the genre's major awards, so the man could pace a plot long before the gods showed up. Daughter of the Deep is his standalone Jules Verne homage, a nautical academy adventure that works as a one-off if another multi-book commitment feels like too much. As for the eternal reading-order questions: publication order within each series, Percy Jackson before Heroes of Olympus, and the Kane Chronicles and Magnus Chase slot in wherever, though skipping them means missing crossover treats. The only real mistake is starting with The Trials of Apollo, which assumes you already know everyone and their emotional baggage. Beyond that, relax. These are books built to be devoured in a weekend with snacks, and they know it.