He was rewarded with a silver-and-red can of soda. He brandished it at the dolphin warriors as if spraying them with bug repellant. "Behold!" Percy shouted. "The god's chosen beverage. Tremble before the horror of Diet Coke!" The dolphin-men began to panic. They were on the edge of retreat. Percy could feel it.

I've always found the second book in a series is the hardest to write.

Also ... the plan sounded exactly like the sneaky, twisted, ridiculously annoying and noble sort of thing Leo Valdez would do.

The way Leo figured it, he spent more time crashing than he did flying. If there was a rewards card for frequent crashers, he'd be, like, double platinum level.

Leo. Jason said, you're wierd. Yeah, you tell me that a lot. Leo grinned. But if you don't remember me, that means I can reuse all my old jokes. Come on!

What about a compromise? I’ll kill them first, and if it turns out they were friendly, I’ll apologize.

Would Grandmother scold him? Would she say, “Frank! Thank the gods, you've come. I'm surrounded by monsters.” More likely she'd scold him, or mistake them for intruders and chase them off with a frying pan.