the magician

The Magician: The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel, by Michael Scott was a good follow-up to The Alchemyst. It keeps the story moving forward, and is just as interesting and fast paced, and has its own taste of intrigue and new characters to keep the interest up. As I said about The Alchemyst, Scott does a job job of recycling old myths into his new, and original story without them seeming either old, or borrowed.

New characters also appear from history, with names that most adults and some young adults will recognize, and add weight and color to the storyline. These new characters, and what they bring with them, also helps to fill in the back story, which, it seems clear, Scott has painstakingly researched and thought through. The story seems welded to the myths and legends we all know in an interesting and new way, and ties them together in the storyline neatly and rather simply.

Scott's writing style is easy to read, which is especially important to me and my son, as I'm reading aloud to him. We just finished The Magician and have begun the third book: The Sorceress. The fourth book, The Necromancer, is available for pre-order on Amazon, and is due out on May 24. According to the Random House site for the series, there will be a total of six volumes. This can probably change I guess, but for now they have volumes five and six listed as The Warlock and The Enchantress. I guess we'll have to find something else to read while Scott finishes the manuscripts, and Random House puts them out. What shall we read next I wonder?