Happy news for fans of Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson and the Olympians series! It seems we no longer have to be sad that the original series has ended because a new spin-off series is in the works! According to the author Heroes of Olympus will be a five-book series. The new series is set in Percy Jackson’s world and Percy has an important role to play, but a new cast of main characters will take center stage this time around. The first book will be called The Lost Hero and is set to be released on October 12, 2010.

Here’s a brief description of the first new book from Amazon.com:

Jason has a problem. He doesn’t remember anything before waking up on a school bus holding hands with a girl. Apparently she’s his girlfriend Piper, his best friend is a kid named Leo, and they’re all students in the Wilderness School, a boarding school for “bad kids.” What he did to end up here, Jason has no idea—except that everything seems very wrong.

Piper has a secret. Her father has been missing for three days, and her vivid nightmares reveal that he’s in terrible danger. Now her boyfriend doesn’t recognize her, and when a freak storm and strange creatures attack during a school field trip, she, Jason, and Leo are whisked away to someplace called Camp Half-Blood. What is going on?

Leo has a way with tools. His new cabin at Camp Half-Blood is filled with them. Seriously, the place beats Wilderness School hands down, with its weapons training, monsters, and fine-looking girls. What’s troubling is the curse everyone keeps talking about, and that a camper’s gone missing. Weirdest of all, his bunkmates insist they are all—including Leo—related to a god.

Rick Riordan, the best-selling author of the Percy Jackson series, pumps up the action and suspense in The Lost Hero, the first book in The Heroes of Olympus series.  Fans of demi-gods, prophesies, and quests will be left breathless–and panting for Book Two.

I already have a guess as to what Percy’s involvement might be, but it’s far too soon to start speculating. I’m just happy to hear there will be more Olympian and Half-blood stories. And this means I can go ahead and read books 4 and 5 of the Olympians series which I’ve been saving.

Have you read the Percy Jackson books? Are you happy to hear that there will be more Olympians stories? Will you read this new series?