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bookswithsav · 4 months

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The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel: The Necromancer

Book Information

Title : The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel: The Necromancer

Author : Michael Scott

Series : The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel (Book Four)

Rating

Was the story engaging?

The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel: The Necromancer is a very engaging story. With the return of the characters that have been introduced earlier on in the series, the story that began in The Alchemyst continues, throwing more and more at the audiences and the characters. The Necromancer seems to be a little more calm in terms of events compared to that of the previous books, however, the story being told is still riveting and does a wonderful job at building the bridge between the beginning and end of the overall journey.

Rating: 5/5

Were the characters enjoyable/developed well?

The Necromancer does something very important within the The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel series, and that is to introduce the changes in characterizations that have been happening under the surface in the previous books. All of the characters that have previously been involved in the story continue to develop as the situations around them change, becoming (in some form) a result of the battle being fought. There are a few characters in which have had a sense of doubt building around them for quite a while now, and this is continued within The Necromancer, causing further doubts on what is truthfully right or wrong. While most of the characterizations within The Necromancer were done beautifully and fit well or continue to build upon what we know as the audience, there are a few situations where characterizations of specific characters feel off, creating a sense of shock due to the abruptness of the change - however, I believe this is due to something we don’t quite know yet.

Rating: 5/5

Was the plot developed well?

The plot within The Necromancer was developed splendidly. I have to argue that The Necromancer is one of the most important books within the series so far, as it is the story that it tells allows an insight into what is truthfully happening and what is truthfully at stake for the characters. Although it’s arguably slower in pace than the other books so far, the plot is developed in a truthfully beautiful way that allows the readers to get a glimpse into both the past and the future, as important details of the history that has caused everything are revealed while also hinting at what is to come. While I had originally said that The Sorceress had an important job of continuing to accelerate the overall story forwards, I now have to say that The Necromancer holds this job title more accurately, as it acts at the bridge between what has happened, what is happening, and what is to come.

Rating: 5/5

Was the audience kept in mind?

I do have to say that the audience was kept in mind throughout The Necromancer. Something that’s been an issue throughout most of this series is the fact that many creatures of different myths, legends, and religions are introduced to the story without much further explanation. The Necromancer continues what The Sorceress achieved by continuing to offer an explanation as to why these creatures are important and/or horrendous, whether this is by directly giving an explanation or through context clues. Additionally, other elements of the story as well as different characterizations are explained in an effective and appropriate (no unnecessarily direct explanations) method, creating a wonderfully smooth read that allows the audience to be pulled from one situation to another.

Rating: 5/5

Would I recommend the book?

I would absolutely recommend The Necromancer. Standing in the fourth book out of six in the series, The Necromancer does a beautiful job at creating an absolutely riveting story while also continuing the overall story that the audience has become invested in. Through a plot filled with important information, The Necromancer sets up the rest of the series with a feeling of anticipation and incoming doom, driving the story with an even greater sense of risk than before.

Rating: 5/5

Overall Rating: 5/5

Review

Warning: Spoilers!

The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel: The Necromancer was quite a read, and as I mentioned above, it does an absolutely brilliant job at connecting different parts of the overarching story together.

As the audience, we’re caught in this position, similar to Sophie and Josh, where we just don’t know what’s happening and what’s happened. There’s a lot of history that led the world to get to this point, and while some of the characters we come in contact with know it, most don’t, and those who do don’t know all of it. Because of this, everything that Sophie and Josh choose to do becomes a toss up on whether or not their actions are right or wrong, and it doesn’t seem like anyone will know until the end. - which is approaching quickly.

I first want to go through and discuss Perenelle and her characterization in The Necromancer. In the Rating section, she was the character that I was referring to when I said that her characterization was abruptly different from that of what we’d seen previously in The Sorceress. In fact, in my review for The Sorceress, I stated that I believed Perenelle was the more truth worthy of the Flamels. I don’t necessarily agree with this now. Previously, we had seen Perenelle worry about Sophie, Josh, and Nicholas frequently as she was separated from them due to being captured by Dee, consistently asking how the twins were doing and what danger they might be in despite her own position. In The Necromancer, however, all of the care that we had previously seen gets thrown right out the window. She’s seen constantly pushing Nicholas despite him quickly aging, acting very cold towards Sophie when she doesn’t do exactly what Perenelle wants, and even snapping at Josh and telling him that he’s inferior to his twin. Before this book, I believed that Nicholas may have been the more cruel of the two, with his short temper towards the twins and his seeming disregard for their safety, but in comparison to Perenelle’s characterization in The Necromancer, I can’t say that this is the case. Nicholas is growing weaker as he ages quickly, which may be some of the cause for the decrease in direct interactions we see between him and the twins, but he seems to wish for their safety and their happiness more than Perenelle does, and I have a feeling it’s always been this way.

It’s been stated by multiple characters that out of the Flamels, Perenelle is the one that should be feared greater than Nicholas, and this fact was backed up by the idea that she was a highly skilled sorceress that also possessed incredible wit, allowing her to think her way out of situations quickly. However, it’s also been stated that Pernelle has been pushing to fight the Dark Elders for centuries at this point, trying to convince Nicholas to take the fight directly to the other side instead of waiting and protecting the Codex like he desired. With the subtle cruelty that Perenelle is now showing the twins due to her desire to use them in the fight, it has to be wondered if Perenelle is the driving force behind the Flamel’s hunt for the twins of legend, dooming many to a fate that could have easily been avoided, dragging Nicholas along due to his love for her. Let me explain my reasoning behind this really quickly.

Not once throughout the series so far have we seen Perenelle feel guilty for her actions (or at least that I can remember). When Sophie directly confronts her about her involvement in getting both her and Josh hired, Pernelle does not shy away from the question, but instead happily confirms it, telling Sophie that she knew they were the ones. It has to be asked; how many children has Perenelle told that to? We know that there’s a long list of twins who have been involved with the Flamels and fallen victim to their circumstances, and through Nicholas’s nightmare in the previous book, we can assume that they all look similar and hold some of the same qualities about them. Also from Nicholas’s nightmare, we can understand that there’s a sense of guilt that he carries with him regarding all of the previous twin’s fates - especially when we learn this is a reoccurring dream for him. What Nicholas and Perenelle have done to the previous sets of twins causes some form of guilt for Nicholas, causing him to shy away from using more dangerous artifacts and directly hurting Sophie and Josh, but we don’t see this with Pernelle. In The Necromancer, now that she is directly involved with the twins, she becomes abruptly different, pushing Sophie to use ancient technology that she knows isn’t safe to use, snapping at Josh, and overall putting multiple people in a different kind of danger than Nicholas had before. Arguably, Sophie and Josh’s Awakenings were something that needed to happen if they really were the twins of legend, which Nicholas seems to fully believe at this point, and despite the risks, it was the step that was either going to lead to their success or failure concerning what they think is right. But Perenelle’s push to use the skull, an ancient artifact not even the Elders want to touch, and her quiet anger at Sophie’s refusal creates this weird sense of danger surrounding her, and it seems as though Nicholas was not the one we needed to really worry about. (Also, just dropping this in here, the Witch of Endor remembers nothing of Pernelle - at least that Sophie can find.)

Now I want to talk about Sophie, and more specifically, what the Witch of Endor’s memories are providing to the story. I mentioned before that The Necromancer is where a lot of information is beginning to reveal itself to not only the twins, but also to us as an audience, and most of that is provided through the Witch of Endor’s memories that Sophie now possesses. Through her memories, it’s revealed that there’s something else happening that’s a little bigger than previously thought, as we learn that there’s something very wrong with that skull the Flamels possess. The Witch had spend quite a while (even for an immortal) working to rid the world of the ancient technology, putting herself at risk in order to find ways to discard them. So why do the Flamels have one? And what exactly does the Witch know that Sophie hasn’t figured out yet? There’s something very important regarding the ancient technology of the time before the Elders being hinted at, but without direct access of memories from Sophie’s point of view, we’re not going to understand the importance of these objects besides the fact that they should be feared; and if they should be feared, why would the Flamels possess it? We also know that the swords that are now in Dee’s possession are much more powerful than originally thought, and indeed much older than originally thought due to the knowledge that they provided him. The Necromancer places a very large importance on the danger of these objects, hinting that they find some way of damaging the user when in possession, and that makes their involvement and existence all the more important to the overall story.

We need to talk about Josh. Throughout the series so far, Josh has been increasingly weary of the Flamels and the company that they keep - and honestly, for good reason. Nicholas has consistently put them in danger from the start, and Perenelle, as far as Josh is aware, is a willing proxy to these actions. Everyone that he and Sophie meet are hiding some form of secret from them, and Sophie is consistently given more opportunities than him despite his willingness to participate. It makes total sense for Josh, a teenager who is scared and in danger with his sister, to become weary of the people who put them into danger in the first place. It definitely doesn’t help that Dr. Dee and Machiavelli give him the opportunity to choose in some form whenever they’re around him, although Machiavelli really seems to be the only one who actually means it (giving Josh the opportunity to back out of being Awakened by Mars due to danger). Josh’s eventual switching of sides has been hinted at since the beginning of the series, starting with the end of The Alchemyst and only continuing from there. The question is how is he involved now that he’s decided to leave Sophie and side with the Dark Elders? And how does this impact the history that’s already been told?

If Micheal Scott thought he was sneaky with this, he wasn’t. Unless I’m wrong, then completely ignore this next part, but I’ll find that out later. It’s been implied over and over again that the original twins looked incredibly similar to Josh and Sophie, which is most likely the reason why many of the twins the Flamels attempted to use also resembled Josh and Sophie. With the knowledge that Scathach, Joan, Shakespeare, Palamedes, and Saint-Germain actually fought with the original twins on Danu Talis, we now know that there’s some significant overlap between the time periods. What if Sophie and Josh are not only the twins of legend but also the original twins, and their separation that is happening currently leads to the fight that destroys Danu Talis and sets the world as they know it into motion? This would explain the unease that they set in those who remember the original twins and were present during Danu Talis’s destruction, as well as the need to send those who have worked with them back in time.

The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel: The Necromancer raises a lot of questions for the audience, and it does so beautifully. With the twisting of time, technology, and betrayal, The Necromancer sets up the ending of the story with a continuously accelerating pace, furthering the risk of danger for the characters as well as the anticipation for the audience.

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