The Enchantress by Michael Scott

The final installment of the series The Secrets of The Immortal Nicholas Flamel was definitely not a let down. It is, as all last books should be, fast-paced, action packed, and chocked full of epic battles to the death.

Awesome:

1. The plot of this whole series is incredibly well thought-out and equally well-written. So, the plot could have turned out pretty boring and conventional. But Michael Scott turned it into something extraordinary. I loved all the little nuances in the story that made the series unique and fascinating. Michael Scott created an amazing world that is just as compelling and detailed as J.K. Rowling’s wizarding world. Okay, maybe not as detailed or unique, but close enough.

2.One thing Michael Scott does that J.K. Rowling doesn’t do quite as well? He makes his characters super lovable. You get to form genuine emotional connections with all the characters in the series because they’re all relatable and compelling. On the other hand, I was sort of ambivalent toward about 80% of the characters in Harry Potter, including Harry Potter himself. No, scratch that. Especially Harry Potter himself. Michael Scott creates wonderful, well-rounded characters with so depth and complexity.

3. The villains aren’t the conventional ‘let’s destroy Earth and kill of all the humans, it’ll be a whole lot of fun’ kind, which makes for a great plot that’s not all about killing the stupid maniacal villain who has a penchant for giving long speeches and torturing poor innocent cats for fun. The villains are driven by impulses deeper and more complex than just a illogical desire for vengeance/violence, and likewise for the heroes- they’re not just one-sided, really powerful (a.k.a. boring) self-righteous superheroes who sound more like preachers/pastors than normal people.

4. If you’re interested in myths and legends and heroes, this is the book for you. Michael Scott does a supremely good job at bringing all these characters to life and mixing them together. It’s fun when you get to read about one hero and one villain, but with twenty heroes and twenty villains, there’s twenty times the fun.

5. There are a lot of twists in the plot, so you’re kept on your feet, constantly being swept from one heart-stopping revelation to the next. You never really know what’s going to happen next, and that’s what makes this series so good. Right till the end, you’re still trying to figure out who the bad guys and who the good guys are, because there’s really just a grey line separating the good and the evil.

The Not So Awesome

1. There is really not much of a coherent ending to this book, which wouldn’t be so much of an issue if this wasn’t the last book. But it is. So it is an issue. After a long, hard-fought battle with evil that lasted six five hundred page books. I think we deserve more of a celebration. One second, everyone’s locked in mortal combat, fighting for their lives, and then the next minute, we get cut off to Nicholas Flamel and Perenelle having a touching old-people moment on a bench. One page letter, that scene ends and we’re given an one-and-a-half page letter in the epilogue. Nothing gets wrapped up properly, and it’s really annoying, sort of like someone walking off for tea while he’s supposed to be playing hide and seek with you, so you just sit in your dark damp closet for hours, wondering where he/she went.

2. Honestly speaking, I still don’t really get what happened at the end. I probably have to go back and do a little timeline because the moving back and forth thirty thousand years bit is really taxing on the brain. Contrary to what you’re probably thinking, Michael Scott, having your readers draw a timeline to figure your plot out is not necessarily a good thing.

3. There’s way too little of Scathach.

4. Why are all the people chosen to rule Danu Talis the Egyptian Gods/Pharoahs, i.e. Bastet, Anubis, Aten, Isis, and Osiris? Before this book, the series was a hodgepodge of all the myths and legends of mankind, from Greek heroes to Viking gods and Mayan/Aztec lizard things, which is what makes it so interesting. In this book, though, there’s been an inexplicable shift toward of Egyptian gods and pharaohs, and me no likes it. It makes the series seem as though its a continuation of Rick Riordan’s Egyptian God series (which was a flop).

Others 

If you haven’t already read the rest of the series, here’s a list of the books in the main series:

1- The Alchemyst (i.e. Nicholas Flamel)
2- The Magician (i.e. Dr. John Dee)
3- The Sorceress (i.e. Perenelle Flamel)
4- The Necromancer (i.e. Josh Newman)
5- The Warlock (i.e. Niccolo Machiavelli)
6- The Enchantress (i.e. Sophie Newman)

He’s also written two side-stories, one of Billy the Kid and presumably Scathach and Aoife in the book “Billy the Kid and the Vampyres of Vegas”, and the other one about Joan of Arc, titled “the Death of Joan of Arc”.

Admittedly, the “Billy the Kid and the Vampyres of Vegas” book does sound a little trashy, as in, Twilight-esque, Vampire Diaries trashy, but believe me, it won’t be. Anything written by Michael Scott about Billy the Kid and Scatty won’t be trashy. I hope. (My favorite authors do have an annoying tendency to shoot themselves in the foot by coming up with gross sequels to their awesome main series, i.e. Rick Riordan’s Carter Kane series.)

There’s also supposed to be a movie coming up based on The Alchemyst, and it’s supposed to be out this year, but I’m not sure if that’s really happening.