My Expressions

Book Review: The Alchemyst by Michael Scott

The Alchemyst is the first book in the 6-volume fantasy-novel series, written by Michael Scott, an Irish author and published in May of 2007.

The book is centred around 2 teenage twins, Josh, and Sophie Newman, who are 15 years old. Their parents are archaeologists, and they spend most of their time alone. Sophie works in The Coffee Cup, and Josh works in a bookstore on the other side of the street, in San Francisco.

One day, a mysterious man named Dr John Dee, comes into the bookstore where Josh works, to get a book called the ‘Codex’ or ‘The Book of Abraham the Mage’. Dee casts a spell on the owners of the shop: Nick and Perry Fleming, to get the book. However, as the fight progresses, Josh also notices that Nick Fleming was using magic back on Dee. He discovers that “Nick Fleming” is not an ordinary bookseller. Instead, he is someone else entirely: a legendary alchemist, by the name of Nicholas Flamel who has kept himself and his wife, Perenelle Flamel alive, with the elixir of life, with the help of the Codex.

Dr John Dee manages to steal the book, but not all of it. Accidentally, he leaves the two most important pages behind: the pages he needs to raise the dark elders, whom he works for, and who want nothing but humanity to fall.

Josh and Sophie know that their life has completely changed unless they get the Codex. Nicholas Flamel leads the twin into a very magical adventure, but, on the contrary, quite dangerous as well. They meet a series of Elders, who help them in their endeavour. To find out about the secrets of Nicholas’s and the twin’s amazing quest, one must read this enchanting book. The book, unlike other novels where there is usually a happy ending, finishes with a cliff-hanger: Flamel and the twin jumping into a magical mirror to land in Paris.

W.B. Yeats once said, “The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper.” I feel that this completely relates to what the book is all about. In the story, Nicholas Flamel said, “Magic is really only the utilization of the entire spectrum of the senses.” Nicholas gets one of the elders, Hekate, to awaken the magical powers of Sophie, and Hekate does that by sharpening her senses and expanding them to their full capacity. So, I believe, as does W.B. Yeats, that if we sharpen our senses, we would also be able to see that the universe itself is magic and all the things in it, or that are part of it , are magical!

In a nutshell, this book is excellent. It is based on a plot of my liking, and one that I am especially fascinated in. For me, the events in the book were quite exciting; among several interesting points in the story, one was the battle of the Morrigan and Bastet vs Hekate. It’s guaranteed that those who are eager about the correlation between science and magic, will enjoy this book to the hilt. Giving this book 5 on 5 is not an exaggeration at all!

Anshuman Nagpal is an avid book reader. He is also a reviewer. Read his other book reviews for the Curious Times readers on My Expressions.  You can search the reviews by his name.  

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