Alchemy

Rating:
Summary: Close to Her Best
Review: Alchemy is another unusual thriller from Margaret Mahy. My personal favourite of hers is The Changeover, followed by The Catalogue of the Universe, but this one is pretty close behind. Like Diana Wynne Jones, Margaret Mahy writes strikingly original and very intelligent fantasy. At one breath I am wondering how they get away with some of the things they write, at the next I'm very glad they do... and long may they continue to do so.

Rating:
Summary: Mahy at her very best
Review: I have found myself rather disappointed in Mahy's recent books--until this one came along. The plot is as complex as anything from Diana Wynne Jones. Susan Price describes the book as 'a sinister story of a conjurer and his mysterious cabinet'. The cabinet concerned is one of those boxes into which someone (ostensibly from the audience) climbs and seems to disappear.

Margaret Mahy doesn't need a gloomy castle to create a creepy, amazingly scary atmosphere. She manages it in an ordinary urban New Zealand house. My home will never seem the same now. :-)

A Friend pointed out three disturbing inconsistencies in this book that I must admit I didn't notice myself. Perhaps she read the book in larger chunks than I did. Perhaps, being younger, she simply has a sharper mind. :-) The inconsistencies are as follows:

1. Roland's age is given as 17 (and he has a driving licence) and his younger brother Martin was born when he was eight. It is then said Martin is currently seven, which would make Roland 15, not 17.
2. The gift of six colouring pens, a notebook and a bar of chocolate later becomes six colouring pens, a notebook and a muffin.
3. Jess says her parents take it in turns to be at the house, and later says she is waiting for both to come home.
It is a sad fact that once a writer becomes famous editors are often too scared to suggest changes and it's disappointing that Margaret Mahy's editor is one of these. I remember my husband complaining about a Jack Higgins novel in which the protagonist cast his boat from its mooring without first starting its engine. Later, a small aircraft being used by the 'goodies' was tampered with in a way the pilot would have discovered when doing his pre-flight check. One could argue that Jack Higgins should have done his homework in both cases because you can hardly expect an editor to know the basic rules of boating, never mind anything about pre-flight checks on aircraft. I wasn't terribly sympathetic to my husband's complaint. I simply told him, 'That's what you get when you read best-sellers!'

Rating:
Summary: Sorry to see so few reviews on this book
Review: I was hoping to see how others responded too it. This book has been nominated for the American Library Association's Best Books for Young Adults -- a list that will be whittled down to ten books soon and several honorable mentions.

For those of you who don't know much about Mahy, she is an Australian fantasy writer who has been writing picture books, middle grade novels and short story collections for quite sometime. S Odgers, the reviewer from Tasmania, is dead on in mentioning Diana Wynne-Jones and Mahy together. They are definitely kindred spirits.

Mahy's strong suit is an ability to move from reality into fantasy so smoothly that the fantasy part just makes sense. Of course that would happen. She can also be very funny, and often her books/characters engage in wonderful word play. This book is no exception. Jess Ferret, the mysterious center of Alchemy, is always playing with Spoonerisms, switched words, witched swords you know.

In this book, a teacher (well-meaning???) blackmails a popular perfect student, Roland, into striking up a friendship with the school outcast, Jess Ferret, to find out what is troubling her. Jess doesn't particularly want this attention, and can take care of herself thank you very much. But there are several things odd about her. Her outside of school and at school personalities are very different, and her parents' whereabouts are unknown. Her house is frozen, not temperature-wise. And Roland, is struggling with some side of himself that he would prefer not to acknowledge -- and Jess has something to do with that side of himself.

Doing a reverse Mahy thing, walking her fantasy back to real life -- yes, there are people who collect other people's power. They diminish others to make themselves strong. You don't have to look too far to find someone like that. And this kind of person is very much a part of what is happening in this book.

What bothers me about this book though is her treatment of the bad guy. He is very very much an unarguable bad guy. More subtlety may have been more interesting. He has enough irreconcilable points of difference with Jess in particular, and Roland as well, to be a bad guy simply because his view of what should be doesn't work with their view. Not necessarily because he is evil. Mahy could have found a lot of ideas to play with if she were to take that approach, but she also would have had to abandon some of the ideas she did explore in this book.

Like a lot of Mahy's work, I don't think it's really fair to judge on one reading. The second reading is usually much more fun and much richer, because you can see where she is going with things. You are in on it. I've read her books and thought they were blah the first time, and just loved them the second time. I suspect when I read this book again, I'll love it rather than like it.

Rating:
Summary: Mahy at her very best
Review: I've found myself rather disappointed in Mahy's recent books--until this one came along. The plot is as complex as anything from Diana Wynne Jones. Susan Price describes the book as "a sinister story of a conjurer and his mysterious cabinet'. The cabinet concerned is one of those boxes into which someone (ostensibly from the audience) climbs and seems to disappear.

Margaret Mahy doesn't need a gloomy castle to create a creepy, amazingly scary atmosphere. She manages it in an ordinary urban New Zealand house. My home will never seem the same now. :-)

I'm amazed that both of the reviews posted here so far are so bad. I can only assume the readers are unimaginative adults or young readers not yet ready for the complexities of a plot like that of Alchemy.

Rating:
Summary: Slightly Odd Take on Magical Powers
Review: Roland is instantly suspicious when his English teacher, Mr. Hudson, asks him to spy on one of his less popular classmates. But he has no choice but to go along since Mr. Hudson has proof that Roland was shoplifting.

When he gets closer to Jess Ferret (his target), Roland is instantly aware that something is very different about her, but he doesn't know what. He is sure that there is some kind of conspiracy involving Jess, his teacher, her missing parents, and a magician who haunts his dreams in a recurring nightmare.

This book is sometimes irritating to read due to the authors overuse of italics and showing us the characters thoughts (with repetitive questions like "What's going on? Why?" that quickly become annoying). It's certainly different, and it's not a bad story, but there are other books about discovery of magical prowess that are far more rewarding.

Rating:
Summary: Don't bother
Review: This book is a boring waste of time. I hated it, and that is very rare for me. So much of the book seems to be just filler. Roland makes connections without foundation between events. He thinks about what has happened, and decides that certain events are related. He is right, of course, but it does not flow. Alchemy is a foolish excuse for a book. Reading it, it seems as if the author is fighting to make a half-way decent story so she can publish a book. If only she had realized what a piece of garbage this is before sending it to the publisher.