I love the cover art! I think I'd love anything that shows Percy looking all impressive and powerful--the true son of a sea god--but this image really stands out to me. You've got the faces of the Big Three, with Poseidon front and centre above his son. Thalia is on his left, holding Aegis, her terrifying shield and summoning lightning in her "daughter of Zeus" move, with Zeus' face above her. On his right is Hades above poor little Nico Di Angelo (someone who I'm really starting to feel sorry for after reading HoH, but also wish Riordan would cut the kid SOME slack on the 'everybody hates me' plotline).
This graphic novel is as action-packed as the other two before it, although my lower rating comes from my disappointment in one particular area. Firstly, is the depiction of Thalia. I spent the first third of the book trying to figure out who the dark-haired boy with Percy was. Thalia is supposed to be a little bad-ass, with short, spiky hair, a leather jacket and combat boots, but I quite literally could not figure her out until Apollo showed up and named her as the daughter of Zeus. There were SOME pages where Thalia is shown very close up with thick lashes and feminine features, but for the most part, she looks like a scrawny, poorly drawn male. I'm disappointed in the artist here, but also in Riordan failing to stop this. We really couldn't make Thalia LOOK like Thalia, when Riordan himself already has her depicted in his book The Demigod Diaries?
I also struggle with the fact that all the faces of the older men in this book look too intense and almost mean, no matter what emotion they are trying to convey. There's one scene where Chiron is comforting Percy, but his expression looks just downright cruel.
I'm sad to critique the art of this graphic novel, but it really does bother me that there's a breakdown in the characters. Subjective interpretation is always a factor in these graphic novel-spin offs, but Thalia is so undefined and poorly represented that I, as an adult reader with an English degree, who has read the Percy Jackson book multiple times, had a lot of difficulty figuring out who the tall, scrawny boy was. Moreover, the expressions of the characters are just as important. The dialogue is almost secondary to the images in a graphic novel, but in many of the scenes to take away the dialogue would be to completely alter the story in the reader's interpretation.
The book does a good job at capturing the story and it follows a trimmed version of he plot of The Titan's Curse but if you're looking for a more faithful adaptation, the first two graphic novels were far better.
Here's to hoping The Battle of the Labyrinth is a bit more on the mark...