The Necromancer (The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel, #4)

by Michael Scott

Sophie and Josh have returned to San Francisco. They must protect themselves from the Dark Elders, but they've not yet mastered the magic they'll need to do so. Their trust in Nicholas Flamel is shaken, and their friend Scatty is missing. Unbeknownst to the twins, John Dee has amassed an enormous army of foul creatures, with which he plans to battle Nicholas and his wife, Peronelle. In order for his plan to work, he must train a necromancer to raise the Mother of the Gods from the dead. The twins of legend will make the perfect pupils in his diabolical scheme.

• ISBN10: 0385905165
• ISBN13: 9780385905169
• Publish Date: 25 May 2010 (first published 1 January 2010)
• Publish Status: Out of Print
• Out of Print: 27 July 2021
• Publish Country: US
• Publisher: Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group Inc
• Imprint: Bantam Doubleday Dell
• Format: Hardcover (Library Binding)
• Pages: 403
• Language: English

Reviews

[sa090]

While I do still consider this series a very good one with a very interesting take on mythology and history, it’s seemingly messy inevitable ending is starting to become way more prominent for my taste.

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Michael Scott created a double edged sword with this world, on one side, it’s an awesome blend of history, mythology and everything in between for those who love this sort of thing like myself, since it gives the opportunity to see more. It’s even more amazing when the names are familiar and you sit there in anticipation to see what he will have this individual do in the story. But, on the other side, the continuous addition of these many characters who will ultimately not be getting that big of a development, individual plot line or anything very worthy of their existence in the story makes it more of a con rather than the pro it could’ve been. I’m a sucker for mythology and interesting historical figures, really, the only reason I even picked up this series in the first place is because it had “Nicholas Flamel” in the title, but there’s got to be a limit to how many characters he intends to bring in at some point.

It’s way too many at this rate, and I wouldn’t really have an issue if they served a bigger purpose in the long run, but with the way even more get introduced in the book that follows, it makes the majority of the introduced characters seem like a plot device or a plot convenience instead of actually mattering all that much.... which absolutely sucks when they’re so freaking interesting and I want to sit there with them and learn about his take on them instead of following the plot line sometimes. The new ones and even some of the ones revealed in the last book, get these small bits and pieces of revealed information that just make me want to learn more, but then it never really goes anywhere and we’re back to the plot line.

Of course, the plot line in itself is not bad at all. It’s stretched out for sure and kind of follows the same exact pattern with very little variation, but its other added elements still make it an interesting thing to follow. The characters like I mentioned make it interesting, although I’m not talking about our two main ones in that same sense tbh. Josh and Sophie are just okay, I like Sophie better because unlike her brother, she doesn’t have some kind of inferiority complex towards her position that needs to be revisited continuously which easily makes her less tiring to read about than when it’s her brother. There’s nothing wrong with feeling like you’re less than someone who you see is obviously better, but continuously feeling that despite the fact that you have your own role to play and a more unique set of skills is just tiring.

Josh reminds me of a Japanese Isekai Light Novel protagonist, where he’s shown as this very normal guy who’s shoved into a new world where he’s very weak at the start before we learn that he’s got this hax ability in him and blah blah blah... My distaste of the previously mentioned type of protagonist is probably one of the reasons why I really don’t like Josh when compared to my feelings towards his sister (who is also the same in a sense but lacks the complex, which makes her a little bit more likable), but I honestly can’t help it. His own complex, coupled with the new reveals of their abilities and such made some things in this novel unfortunately more of an inevitable turn of events than a massive shocking turn of one. Which is a bit of a shame, because this book’s idea is very interesting to me.

Speaking of events, the pace of this book follows the same speed as book 3 where the simultaneous perspectives makes it feel much slower and spanning way longer than it really did. Luckily this book ended with us reaching a sense of a new plot line than the one we’ve basically had for these past four books, so hopefully it’ll be a fun ride with more revealed secrets than revealed characters since there is no way he’s going to be able to wrap this up very neatly with the amount of characters in this story and the additional ones he will undoubtably be bringing in later on.

Final rate: 3/5