To start off, this is the fourth in a series about Nicholas Flamel and is preceded by The Alchemist, The Magician, and The Sorceress. The next book is going to be The Warlock. Just to get this out there, I do not approve of authors who put the first chapter of their next unpublished book at the end of the previous one. It drives me crazy. You'd think I'd've learned by now not to read them, but I suppose the law of inertia applies to reading, too. (I just used a really lame science reference in a blog about books. Wow. Sad.)
The characters in these books are all good and bad and therefore more realistic and less annoying then characters of other books I've read. My favorite character right now is on the wrong side, which is unfortunate...but at least there's a character I like, I suppose. Scott made me want to know what was going to happen and his descriptions are always vivid. The characters travel all over the world and see all sorts of cool places which is interesting. His books have taught me some interesting mythological "facts".
Criticisms: These books are pretty decent. Obviously, they've kept me interested enough to keep reading but on the other hand, I haven't bothered to reread any of the previous ones. This could be caused by a number of things: 1. These books call from mythological stories and legends from all over the world and I don't know much about the originals. 2. As the books have gone on, Scott has added far too many characters. He has to go through five or six chapters to cover what's happening to all of them. By the end of these chapters I don't care what's happening to the first character anymore; I just want to know what's happening to the characters in the last two chapters I read. 3. I have several times yelled at the characters for being idiots. Half of them have the same stubborn, I'm right, distrusting personality and the other half have a greater good, stubborn, I'm right personality. 4. There is a lot of drama. 5. I just read the reviews on goodreads.com and everyone was being really whiny.
Rating: Good. Not as good as the first three, but whatever.
Read again? I'll decide after he finishes the series.
You read? I'll give this a maybe. It's not a must read, but it's pretty good.
Age? Teen +
Where did I get this book? I've been borrowing every book in this series from CR.
2 comments:
Hey I've read this one!
K, the 1st chapter of the book thing bugged me for a while too, but then because of the nature of this series where nothing is really resolved at the end of the book anyway, I decided it didn't matter.
Let's see what else. I agree there are a lot of characters in this series which gets a bit frustrating after awhile, but at the same time since most of them are characters in history of which I am familiar with many already it almost is a nice thing, especially getting to know new historical/mythilogical figures.
It isn't a particularly indepth kinda novel when it comes to personality development of the many characters, and that is because he has so many. But in a sense I understand why he does that, because as many popular teen novels go it is more important to have a fast paced/movie like plot, rather than depth.
Also, when do you not yell at the characters for being idiots, what do you think you would do honestly if you were in that situation? but they are idiots because they're not real people with real personalities.
I'm only commenting on the idiot thing; I just got sick of Josh getting a big head. If he were a real person I would think the same thing. I'm not sure what exactly you are asking in that question, actually...
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