sprite writes
broodings from the burrow

June 22, 2010


into the stacks: the necromancer
posted by soe 2:54 am

once upon a time readalong
The Necromancer, by Michael Scott

From the jacket: “Josh and Sophie Newman are finally home. And they’re both more confused than ever about their future. Neither of them has mastered the magics they’ll need to protect themselves, they’ve lost Scatty, and they’re still being pursued by Dr. John Dee. Most disturbing of all, however, is that now they must ask themselves, can they trust Nicholas Flamel? Can they trust anyone?”

My take: Taking up where The Sorceress left off, the Newman twins and the Flamels have returned to San Francisco. They haven’t even made it in the house, though, when Sophie is kidnapped by their friend Scatty’s less upright twin sister, Aoife. In order to reclaim his sister, Josh must put aside his misgivings about the Flamels and unite at least temporarily with the rapidly aging couple. And they must somehow do this quietly, as Macchiavelli and Billy the Kid have returned to Alcatraz to unleash the monsters and John Dee, now branded an outlaw with a Gods-given price on his head, has united with fellow immortal Virginia Dare to also reach San Francisco. There they hope to find a way to rule the world themselves by reanimating a hideous monster from the past. And on another plane in another time, Scatty, Joan, Saint-Germain, Will, and Palamedes have all been reunited with a hook-handed, hooded man who has a different mission for them.

In fantasy series, the middle book is always supposed to be where things really start going downhill and where the tone becomes much darker, and this tome does not vary from the standard fantasy format. Unfortunately, I also worry this is the book in the series where the ambition has not lived up to execution. Because there are now four distinct storylines, the story occasionally feels a bit disjointed and I, at least, never felt like I was getting enough of one thread before being whisked off to the next. The book is still good (just less good than some of the earlier books), and I’m eager to read what happens in the next installment.

Pages: 403


This is one of the books I read for the Once Upon a Time Challenge.

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