The Enchantress

June 15, 2012
Scott tops off his deservedly popular series with a heaping shovelful of monster attacks, heroic last stands, earthquakes and other geological events, magic-working, millennia-long schemes coming to fruition, hearts laid bare, family revelations, transformations, redemptions and happy endings (for those deserving them). Multiple plotlines--some of which, thanks to time travel, feature the same characters and even figures killed off in previous episodes--come to simultaneous heads in a whirl of short chapters. Flamel and allies (including Prometheus and Billy the Kid) defend modern San Francisco from a motley host of mythological baddies. Meanwhile, in ancient Danu Talis (aka Atlantis), Josh and Sophie are being swept into a play to bring certain Elders to power as the city's downtrodden "humani" population rises up behind Virginia Dare, the repentant John Dee and other Immortals and Elders. The cast never seems unwieldy despite its size, the pacing never lets up, and the individual set pieces are fine mixtures of sudden action, heroic badinage and cliffhanger cutoffs. As a whole, though, the tale collapses under its own weight as the San Francisco subplots turn out to be no more than an irrelevant sideshow, and climactic conflicts take place on an island that is somehow both a historical, physical place and a higher reality from which Earth and other "shadowrealms" are spun off. Much rousing sturm und drang, though what's left after the dust settles is a heap of glittering but disparate good parts rather than a cohesive whole. (Fantasy. 11-13)

COPYRIGHT(2012) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Starred review from July 1, 2012
Grades 7-10 *Starred Review* It's the end of the worldwell, actually two worlds: Earth and Danu Talis. Nicholas Flamel and his beloved wife, Perenelle, are making a final stand to save San Francisco from an attack of monsters large and small, launched from Alcatraz Island by Quetzalcoatl. Twins Josh (Gold) and Sophie (Silver) are being staged to take power from Aten and become rulers of an overthrown Danu Talis 10,000 years earlier. It's a classic duel to the death, with author Scott making a valiant, and for the most part successful, attempt at tying up the myriad story lines from the other five books in the Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel series. Fantastical, mythological, and historical figures reappear across the pages as good and evil face off, often to the death and with unpredictable results. Scott's skill at creating complex story lines and detailed, imaginative worlds is on full display. He fully fleshes out his main characters in their final roles, realistically and sometimes surprisingly melding their lives, their deaths, and their futures. This is a powerful and tidy conclusion to a series that has always promised a resolution to the Codex of Abraham the Mage's prophecy: The two that are one must become the one that is all. One to save the world, one to destroy it. (Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)