He played the occasional computer game, preferred first-person shooters like (…) Josh was ordinary.”ĭespite him downplaying his own intelligence he is nearly constantly trying to fact check Nicholas and the other beings around him. He played football, sang- badly- in his friend’s band, had a few girls he was interested in, but no real girlfriend yet. “He was a normal high school sophomore, not too brilliant, but not stupid either. Here’s how Josh is described in that close third person point of view.

For me, it’s too many character to jump between. While the book is subtitled The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel it seems to be a book about the twins Josh and Sophie, but it will bounce from their point of view to Nicholas’s to his kidnapped wife’s, Perenelle’s, to the villainous Dee’s. The book feels like a rushed info dump in preparation for the rest of the series. A lot of what he does tell them is the big events of history that either he had a role in or name drop people who were his apprentices at one point or another. They follow Nicholas Flamel from ancient being to ancient being while sneaking off to double check that everything he says is actually true or historical accurate, if he does actually tell them anything. The book follows a set of twins, Josh and Sophie Newman who are technologically addicted as they stumble into this long game of cat and mouse and have to leave everything behind. But there are bad people working for darker older ones who wish to rule the world and make mankind slaves and they are after the book.

One of these beings created a book that foretold the future and was full of all the Old ones secrets, which a Frenchman picked up and with the help of his wife and a whole lot of travel managed to decipher into an immortality potion. But then in the iron age they began to fade due to an aversion to iron and a next generation of elder beings (very Lovecraftian) began and then faded. The gods are all the same, Egyptian, Greek (the two main ones used in the first book) they just go by different names in different cultures. Michael Scott’s take on it though is that everything exists but came into existence in different waves. The Alchemyst is a part of a series by Michael Scott where real historical events and real people are interwoven with mythology and this idea that comes up in some of my other favorite stories like “American Gods” by Neil Gaiman and practically every book by Rick Riordan that the gods of mythology are in fact real and still around. I was curious whether I’d regret letting it go or not so when I found it at an Aladdin I figured I’d give it another try. I got this book because I vaguely remembered putting it in the donate pile last time I went home although I hadn’t gotten around to reading it at that point.

The secrets of nicholas flamel