Alchemy

Seventeen-year-old Roland discovers that un unpopular girl in his school is studying alchemy and finds that their destiny is linked with that of a power-hungry- magician.

When I picked up this book, I knew I had read it before, but I couldn't remember a single thing about it, as opposed to The Changeover, also by Mahy, about which I can remember much of the plot, but never the name of the book (although I suppose I've fixed that now, haven't I?). That I found this

Show More

book completely forgettable the first time around, and not much better the second, probably tells you everything you need to know.

Show Less

This book could have been made into a powerful message, however the little message it does have for perceiving things around us and our place in the universe is unfortunately lost behind the predictable plot and dimensionless characters. This book is probably suited to younger readers of it's

Show More

target group.

Show Less

Interesting story but sketchy and drawn out too long. Lots of the protagonist inner debate and dialogue. It's a shame because the premise of some people being born to magic but either shutting themselves off to it or (gasp!) having their abilities stolen by malicious magicians could have been

Show More

developed into something much more dynamic. As it is, this story treads between being a good fantasy and a lame romance.

Show Less

Seventeen year-old Roland has stolen something from a shop. He was driven by a very strong compulsion. His Englisg teacher blackmails him with this and orders him to befriend the nerdy Jess Ferret. His motives and the motives off the elusive magician Quando are unclear. Roland meanwhile is more and

Show More

intrigued by Jess and the odd happenings aroud her. More and more occult things happen as time goes past. In the end Jess and Roland have to face Quando.

Original, but not that special.

Show Less

Alchemy is a book that describes how some of the people around you have special powers. Roland is a popular smart kid in a small private school. He has a beautiful girlfriend and the perfect life. One day he makes a mistake that a teacher discovers. The teacher blackmails him into learning more

Show More

about one of his fellow students. Through this process, he learns more about himself and the people around him.

Show Less

Roland has a recurring nightmare: he dreams that a magician locks him into a coffin, and while in the coffin, he discovers a whole new way of existing, an ability to be one with the universe and even, perhaps, to alter it. That's not the scary part of the dream. The scary part is that, when he

Show More

emerges from the coffin, he knows that he is altered forever, in ways he cannot explain. When a teacher blackmails him into spying on solitary Jessica, he realizes that Jess and he have a lot in common - and that their commonality may end up destroying them both.

In general, I like Margaret Mahy's books. I like her strong, thoughtful teen characters, and I like the over-the-top problems they have to deal with. But I have firm opinions about fantasy, and one of them is that I think magic should have clearly defined rules that the author adheres to, no matter how tempting it may be to fudge them. No such rules ever emerged in "Alchemy," which, by the way, is a rather inappropriate title - no alchemy is happening in this book. I was confused throughout the book, and the denouement was messy and unconvincing - loose ends everywhere, nothing clearly explained. Mahy can do better - and HAS done better.

Show Less

Margaret Mahy’s urban fantasy really feels like the blurring of two somethings which are distinct and you think they shouldn’t be able to blur together, and then they do, and you (or rather, I), think, Ohhh… The fantasy seems to creep up on reality in a way which is both alluring and

Show More

disturbing, but it never takes over, and the urban is not just a setting for the fantasy, but an integral part of the plot. Domesticity – family life, school – given depth and insight and importance. I always find something so completely grounding about this – it feels like a world I know very well, a world I maybe walk past or walk through regularly even if it isn’t quite the one I inhabit.

Alchemy reminds me a little of The Changeover but from another perspective; this time, it is a boy who is changing and becoming aware of a supernatural world which is beneath the surface of the one he thinks he lives in. It’s also about family, and power, and relationships, and I liked the way the pieces of the story fitted together – the everyday with the fantastical. I didn’t always like Roland, but I liked how he quoted “Childe Roland to the dark tower came”, and how his chosen quotation came to be more appropriate as the story went on. I liked Jess, with her spoonerisms and word play. I like the way Mahy writes.
It wasn’t exceptionally memorable and it wasn’t the best book I’ve read all year, but I liked it well enough.

“You’ve got all nosy about me for some reason, and you thought I’d fall at your feet with the flattery of being seen – the battery of fleeing scene,” she added, more to herself than to Roland, as if she were testing her own nonsense for unexpected meanings. “Dream on, Fairfield! I’d rather flee the scene, and the battery of the flattery too.”
“Why do you do that?” asked Roland curiously.
“Do what?” she asked, turning with a small measuring cup of ground coffee in her hand.
“Twist words around,” he replied.
“I like trying them out in different ways,” Jess said. “I like spoonerisms… named after Reverend Spooner who used to do it by accident.”

Show Less