Thursday, December 20, 2012

The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel by Michael Scott

LATE POST :)

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Hello, my dears. It's 9 in the morning while I'm typing this. I just finished reading the sixth book of the series The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel. Gonna tell you this now: I actually didn't hate the series! When I started reading the first book, I had this feeling that I'd hate it. But I didn't, and that's why I was able to finish reading all six books in the series! For me, it's not as exciting as the Hunger Games trilogy but I thought it was still pretty engaging over-all. Did I love it? Now, that's a question I still don't know the answer to. I still have a lot of Q's in my head... you know, about the ending and some parts of the story. I know I have to write about this or else I won't be able to sleep. Haha.



So here goes.

For those of you who aren't familiar with the series, Google it. Haha just kidding. The story goes something like this...

The next part contains some spoilers.

-Twins Sophie and Josh witness and somehow get involved in a magical duel between a stranger and Nick Fleming, the owner of the bookshop where Josh is working. The stranger, John Dee, is after The Codex, an ancient magic book. Dee steals the Codex, kidnaps Nick's wife, Perry, and leaves without knowing that Josh has managed to rip the last two pages from the book. Nicholas then reveals to the twins that he is really Nicholas Flamel, a French alchemist who, along with his wife, uses information from the Codex to regularly brew an immortality potion to keep himself alive for centuries. Without the Codex, they won't be able to brew the potion, and they will become mortal again and eventually die. Nicholas also tells the twins that he and Perry believe that Sophie and Josh are the 'twins of legend' - 'The two that are one and the one that is all. One to save the world and one to destroy it.' Nicholas seeks the help of an old friend and an Elder to have the twins' magical powers awakened, just as Dee discovers that the last two pages of the Codex, and unfortunately the ones that  he need, are missing. And this is where the chase begins.-


There were a lot of characters in the whole series that at times I found myself confused, but as the series progressed, I became more familiar with the characters and understood their roles' importance. There were many familiar names (though I don't really know much about them because I am not well-versed in history and mythology).

The story's told from a third person's point of view. A lot of times I found myself really engaged after reading a chapter. As engaging and exciting as many of the chapters were, I still found myself bored by a quite a few of them, especially the flashbacks. Each book has more than 60 chapters. A lot, right? But they're short chapters, don't worry :P

I will tell you this: A lot of things happened from the first to the last book that I couldn't believe it when I realized that only 1-2 weeks had actually passed in the book's setting from the first to the last book. That's how continuous and fast-paced the story was.

Now here are my questions.

1. Why were Isis and Osiris, supposedly Earthlords, so easy to defeat? I thought there was going to be a really cool magic battle between them and the twins on the top of the Pyramid of the Sun. 
2. What happened to the Codex? The Mage wrote it, right? But when Dee and all the other characters ended up in the past at Danu Talis, Abraham took the book from him. Why did he need to take it? I mean, they're in the past so technically, the Codex still wasn't stolen yet. Then Abraham then handed it to his wife who then gave it to Josh who eventually became Marethyu. Marethyu gave it to the Flamels, then Dee stole it from the Flamels, and the cycle goes on. Am I missing something? 
3. Why did Sophie not get much of an ending?
4. What happened to the Flamels? At first I thought they died in the end because of what Marethyu said about taking them to Paris blah blah blah, but then he said (in his letter to Sophie) that he and the Flamels were there at Aoife and Niten's wedding. I'm so confused.


Yeah. Can't sleep. Still thinking of the ending and looking back at some parts. I might have overlooked some things? 

Over-all, it's an engaging series, and I enjoyed most of it. I read the whole series through my Kindle app. I saw the actual books in the bookstore. I like the magical-looking book covers :)
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Giveaway Alert! Dream Makeup - Sigma Essential Brush Kit Giveaway

Helloooo! I joined Dream Makeup's Sigma giveaway! They're giving away a Sigma Essential Brush Kit (of winner's choice)! AWESOME.


I chose the Blue Bunny kit. WANT. WANT. WANT! Please, please, please, be mine!!!

*fingers crossed*