So I’ve recently begun reading The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas
Flamel by Michael Scott and I had thought I’d wait until I’d finished
book 6 and then review the series as a whole but instead I’m going to
break it down as it’s taking me a while to read the books (why must life
get in the way of reading?) and I’ll forget most of what happened
otherwise. Books one and two are called The Alchemyst and The Magician
respectively, referring to Nicholas Flamel, who serves as a mentor for
the twins, and Dr John Dee, once a pupil of Flamel’s, now an immortal in
the service of the Dark Elders.
The twins are Sophie and Josh Newman who possess uncommonly clear and
rare auras of Silver and Gold respectively. Interestingly these auras
also come with distinctive cents, vanilla for Sophie and oranges for
Josh. Flamel’s aura is green and mint whereas Dee’s is yellow and
sulpherous. Thanks to Harry Potter the majority of this generation’s
readers will have heard the name Nicholas Flamel and may know that he is
a historical figure with roads in Paris named for he and his wife
Perenelle, whose home claims the title of the oldest house in Paris and
is now a restaurant and apartments. Readers may not be so familiar with
Dr John Dee who was an English mathematician, astronomer, astrologer,
occultist, navigator,
imperialist and consultant to Queen Elizabeth I, he also chose the date of her coronation.
Sophie and Josh, who had been spending the summer with their aunt
while their archeologist parents were on a dig, quickly find themselves
embroiled in a world populated by myths, legends, nightmares and
fantasies. And when I say quickly, books one and two take place over
two, maybe three days. In that time Dee attacked Flamel, stealing the
Book of Abraham the Mage, also called the Codex, but he loses the last
two pages when he tears the book out of Josh’s grasp (who had been
working at Flamel’s book shop). Though how he could have pulled the
pages, given the description of both book and scene, is a mystery to me,
but a necessary plot device to prevent Dee from releasing the ‘Dark
Elders’.
Dee kidnaps Perenelle which Flamel escapes with the twins, who don’t
understand why they can’t just go home. Flamel explains this is because
Dee will kill them and anyone he thinks may have had contact with the
book to keep it secret. Flamel takes them to Scathath; an immortal but
not invulnerable, by her own admission, warrior who claims to have
taught the humani how to fight. Scathath is actually a legendary
Scottish warrior woman but she’s so much more in these books.
Dee attacks again, this time with rats and gollums made from mud
which Flamel and Scathath defeat and then they flee to the shadow realm
of Elder Hekate, the Goddess with Three Faces.* The Goddess awakens
Sophie’s powers and her senses (based on the ‘humans only use a tiny
percentage of their brain’ and ‘all capable of magic’ ideas) but before
she can do the same for Josh, Dee attacks with Bastest (Egyptian cat
goddess) and The Morrigan (the crowd goddess) destroying the shadow
realm and killing Hekate.
Perenelle, still imprisoned manages to possess Sophie, whose been out
of it since her awakening, giving the group the opportunity to escape
and tells her husband to take them to the Witch of Endor. The Witch
happens to be Scathath’s grandmother and a master of air magic, who
imparts all her memories and knowledge to Sophie and uses a leygate (a
mirror portal on a point where magical leylines intersect) to whisk them
away to Paris to escape Dee.
Book two opens in Paris, where Dee has enlisted the help of the
Italian, Niccolo Machiavelli, a historian, diplomat, philosopher,
humanist and writer based in Florence during the Renaissance, who is
also in the service of the Dark Elders. On top of that, he’s now one of
the most powerful men in Paris and uses the local forces to try and
apprehend Flamel and the children. He is initially thwarted when the
party meets up with Count of St. Germain who has been variously
described as a courtier,
adventurer, charlatan,
inventor,
alchemist, pianist, violinist and an amateur composer, and is a current
pop star and married, in secret, to Joan of Arc, who trained under
Scathath.
Being the only non-awakened, non-immortal and entirely too human
member of the team Josh not only begins to feel envious of his sister
but after a run in with Dee in Ojai he doubts the intentions of Nicholas
Flamel. Flamel however retrieves a sword for Josh, the twin blade to
Excalibur the ice blade, and so it is the blade of fire. So while Sophie
learns fire magic from St. Germain, Josh learns sword play with Joan
and Scathath. Skills he has to put to fast use when Machiavelli summons
three Valkyries to take out Scathath who, in turn, release one of their
beasts on the Warrior that Dee accidentally freed when he destroyed the
World Tree in Hekate’s shadowrealm.
Josh defeats the monster and frees Scathath, only for her to be
dragged into the water by Dagon, a monster more fish than man who had,
till now, been serving Machiavelli. In the confusion Dee convinces Josh
to come with the Italian and he and descend into the catacombs of Paris
(think the Court of Miracles if you’ve seen Disney’s Hunchback of Notre
Dame) which do exist even to this day. Once limestone quarries they are
now filled with human bones from the days of plague when the graves of
Paris overflowed. There he is presented to Mars, the God of War, who
awakens Josh and imparts to him battle knowledge.
Sophie, Flamel, Joan and St. Germain arrive in time to retrieve Josh
from the vengeful sleeping God and trap him as he attempts to destroy
them when Sophie refuses to lift a curse placed on him by the Witch of
Endor who had once been his lover. Dee and Machiavelli make for higher
ground, namely the top of Notre Dame and animated the famous gargoyles
but Josh and Sophie combine their powers to destroy them and escape. And
so the chase continues as Flamel flees Paris with the twins to London,
the heart of Dee’s power, in an attempt to find another leygate to get
them back to San Francisco and back to Perenelle who has been imprisoned
on the abandoned Alcatraz.
Scott uses chapter changes to change scene between the twins, Dee and
Perenelle however it’s difficult to pick out the protagonist at times
between the twins and Flamel as it seems to change perspective between
them very quickly. Flamel, and other characters, have often mentioned a
prophecy in the Codex about twins, ‘the two that are one’ or something,
with silver and gold auras. This is linked to Danu Talis (or Atlanatis)
the paradise home of the Elders that sank after a fight between two twin
Elders with auras of gold and silver. It’s also said that the Elder
race pre-dates humanity and various Elders have been attributed with
teaching humani how to read, write, make fire and various other
evolution basics.
Now, I’m not saying I dislike this series, there are elements I do
like, the characters are good and I like that there are different types
of magic and different specialties. Flamel is the Alchemyst, Perenelle
is the Sorceress and Dee, though referred to as the Magciain is, first
and foremost, a Necromancer. However the twins element isn’t working for
me so far, don’t get me wrong, I love twins, but there’s a lot of ‘we
can finish each others sentences, we know when the other is in pain, we
know what the other is thinking because we always think the same’. Put
that together with the unclear protagonist and you begin to wonder why
Scott even bothered with twins for anything other than an aesthetic
reason and to be able to claim to have a lead of both gender.
We’ve seen some progression in Josh’s character and his conflicting
feelings towards his sister but we see comparatively little of what
Sophie is thinking and feeling from a development point of view. We see
lots of her ‘oh my head hurts from all the new magic’ but not a lot
else. My other problem is that the prophecy has been discussed in front
of them and they didn’t seem overly curious or ask any questions until
much later. They still aren’t really.
So we’ve got two books of about 400 pages each and we really haven’t
seen any major plot development. We’ve seen lots of action and lots of
name dropping of historical figures and mythical beings from across the
ages but we haven’t progressed past, we have a prophecy, some magical
twins and a man hell bent on releasing evil onto the world who needs the
two final pages of the Codex. Seeing as there are four more books to go
that’s a lot of room for improvement, but on the other hand I don’t
really want to read a whole book full of disposable characters who may,
or may not, turn up for a big finale. I’d rather have plot and main
character advancement.
Now these books also show an impressive amount of research on the
part of the author, both into the historical figures and the places. In
fact book two displays a knowledge of Parisian streets that rivals OCR
maps but as a reader who has little to know familiarity with Paris,
being bombarded with street names gives me nothing. But again, these
books, so far, just seem to be history books wrapped up in fiction.
This is partly the reason I chose to break this review up because I
wanted to record how I was feeling now about the series and see if that
changes as it progresses. So far there have been hints of greatness so
here’s hoping there’ll be a big finale, but hopefully I won’t have to
wait until book 6 for it and that there will be some meaty plot chunks
to come.
On a more positive note I love the covers. Or at least I love the
cover set I’ve displayed in this review, although mine has a slightly
different format of where all the writing is but the visual is the same.
Interestingly, when I went into my local book store to buy the series
they only had books 1-3 and they were all in different cover sets. Now
I’m assuming the ones I have are recent and re-prints because on the
back I could see the titles of all 6 books and the prospective covers so
I went up to the desk and asked if I could order the set in the same
covers. The shop assistant told me I’d have to wait months so I resorted
to getting them online and now have all 6 lined up, matching, on my
shelf. Although the last book, the Enchantress I believe, is larger than
the rest, might send it back and wait for the smaller paper back to be
released. Though why they do alternating sizes in paper backs I don’t
know.
To finish, I would encourage readers to read these books as they show
a great wealth of knowledge and clearly a lot of skill linking them all
up and making them fit into a recognizable magic/history system.
However, were these books to be translated into film, I wouldn’t mind if
they combined the books to keep the plot snappy.
On to book 3, The Sorceress.
*(If anyone has seen the 4kids dub of Yu-Gi-Oh or even Yu-Gi-Oh
abridged, they will understand why I can’t take the term ‘shadow realm’
seriously.)
