Percy writes in a pace that I can only describe as even. The story doesn’t have rhythm like the sea has rhythm, the pace moving slower the faster, instead there is only a steady unfolding, a constant dialog with no pauses or breaks.
Percy wrote, in the Thanatos Syndome, that Tom said, “small disconnected facts, if you take note of them, have a way of becoming connected.” I remember thinking that this is true, but often the connections are worthless or unsubstantiated. You should be careful about drawing connections between things with little to go on.
The Thanatos Syndrome is written in the present tense. Even when Percy is retelling something that occured earlier, he tells it in the present tense as his character remembers it. This ties to my previous observation about the way Percy doesn’t waver his pace.