Michael Scott: The Alchemyst review

The cover text sounded promising but all in all Michael Scott's The Achemyst: The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel was a massive disappointment.

The book tells about the twins Sophie and Josh, whose lives change when they see a mysterious man named John Dee and the owner of a local bookstore called Nick using magic against each other. By witnessing this and grasping a few pages of a book called Codex which Dee steals, the twins are thrown into a world of myth and magic. The bookstore owner is actually the famous alchemist Nicholas Flamel who is protecting the Codex.
They have to flee from John Dee who wants the missing pages and has kidnapped the wife of Nicholas. This leads to adventure filled with ancient gods, mythical beings and a prophecy.

This sounds quite alright, but sadly it isn't.
First of all, the twins are really boring characters. You can't grasp them and the style of writing leaves them really flat.
The narration repeats itself from time to time and isn't really complex. (Or perhaps it is the Finnish translation which had at least a couple of serious mistakes.)
And one thing that really bothered me was the persona of Bastet. I just couldn't see her like that.

Scott's book is the first part of a trilogy and I don't feel like reading the rest at all. I can't believe they are already planning a movie of it and that it actually has won some awards.

Perhaps this would work on some kid of 10 years or so. For me it was just plain boring.

/ [Caterin S.]

   More book reviews