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crewgurl 's review for:
The Alchemyst
by Michael Scott
I really wanted to like this book. YA, some magic, a little bit of history...it's right up my alley. Except I really didn't like it.
The book starts off with twins Josh and Sophie working across the street from each other (right...) at their respective summer jobs. We then get thrown into the plot that Flamel is really hundreds of years old and is protecting a magical book from one of his former protégées gone bad. Yes, we've all heard a plot like this before. Predictable. I can forgive predictable if it's done well but this wasn't. The rest of the book is spent bouncing from one elder (basically gods but not) to another. (Oh and their parents were totally okay with them going into the desert with Famel-Josh's boss-for an undisclosed period of time because that's what parents of 15 year olds do...I know, sounds like an episode of Dateline). The writing isn't awful, but I found myself wanting to skip entire chapters of the oil (mainly the ones focused on Dee-the resident bad guy) because they were so boring. Sophie gets progressively more annoying as the book goes on, which is almost unnoticeable compared to the whiner that Josh becomes. Then the book ends with them jumping through a mirror as a form of teleportation, all ready to jump into the next book. I cannot stress how much I hate this. I get that everything is a series these days, but at least have the courtesy to give a book a proper ending.
The book starts off with twins Josh and Sophie working across the street from each other (right...) at their respective summer jobs. We then get thrown into the plot that Flamel is really hundreds of years old and is protecting a magical book from one of his former protégées gone bad. Yes, we've all heard a plot like this before. Predictable. I can forgive predictable if it's done well but this wasn't. The rest of the book is spent bouncing from one elder (basically gods but not) to another. (Oh and their parents were totally okay with them going into the desert with Famel-Josh's boss-for an undisclosed period of time because that's what parents of 15 year olds do...I know, sounds like an episode of Dateline). The writing isn't awful, but I found myself wanting to skip entire chapters of the oil (mainly the ones focused on Dee-the resident bad guy) because they were so boring. Sophie gets progressively more annoying as the book goes on, which is almost unnoticeable compared to the whiner that Josh becomes. Then the book ends with them jumping through a mirror as a form of teleportation, all ready to jump into the next book. I cannot stress how much I hate this. I get that everything is a series these days, but at least have the courtesy to give a book a proper ending.