caviglia reviewed on 10/26/2009

Helpful Score: 5

I was pretty underwhelmed by "The Alchemyst" and I won't be reading the sequels. I will say - for younger people, it might be an enjoyable enough book (I guess), and may lead them into other, more interesting reading directions. It basically felt like a mish-mash of warmed over ideas from Harry Potter (The One!), Greek, Egyptian and Norse mythology (while leaving out most of the stuff that made them interesting), and the action/special effect sequences from "The Mummy" movies. The writing was pretty flat, and he really could have used a good editor, because boy does he like to repeat himself! The characters are two-dimensional puppets who behave the way the plot dictates.

I would also like to note that this is the second YA book that I've read in the past couple of months where there is no sort of resolution at the end. The story just stops. As I said in my review for the other book, I have no problem with series long arcs, but any series book worth it's postage has some sort of individual structure. This does not. It's just one d@mn thing after another until you run out of pages. Look, I know the publishing world is in a lot of trouble, but I really hate this trend. /rant.

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