Michael Scott (1) (1959–)

There seem to be two camps on this book; those who find it life-alteringly profound, and those who think that it's trying to be life-alteringly profound.

Certainly, it makes gently grand statements about life in a charmingly obvious way. It's a perfectly sweet tale full of the quasi-profundity that one would expect from a deliberate allegory. It's enjoyable enough for what it is, but what it is shouldn't be overstated.

I should mention a particular caveat - I listened to the audiobook read show more by Jeremy Irons, and that guy could imbue the phonebook with gravitas, so that may have made it more enjoyable than it would have been as a straight read. show less

A collection of stories based on Doctor Who, each something like 40-50 pages long, which were originally published separately as ebooks. As the title indicates, there's one for each of the first 12 Doctors, all by different authors.

I'd say there are four or five stories in here that I very much enjoyed, pieces with clever storytelling, good writing, and a solid handle on the characters. Philip Reeve's Fourth Doctor story is a notable standout: the Doctor's voice is pitch-perfect and it's got show more a great mix of interesting science fictional concepts and fun silliness that feels very much of this era of the show, with a dash of timey-wimeyness that lets it do something that would have been impossible to do in the original series, at least not without access to a real-life time machine. Second place perhaps goes to Holly Black's 12th Doctor entry, which features a setting that should be impossible to take seriously and a twist that arguably should not work, but pulls it all off brilliantly through sheer force of the Doctor's personality and the employment of a very well-rendered and realistic-feeling guest character POV.

The rest of the stories, in general, were readable enough, but very unmemorable. Most of them at least had good character voices, which is important, but while pretty much all of them are trying to do something clever or interesting with their plots, they're not necessarily quite hitting the mark, being either a bit of the wrong kind of silly, or not especially creative, or just generally not as exciting as they're trying to be. Plus, at least one of them did put me into "Um, actually..." pedantic-fan mode, as I can't help noticing that, even taking into account Doctor Who's notoriously inconsistent continuity, its entire premise is demonstrably false.

Rating: This was enough of a mixed bag that I'm going to give it a 3.5/5, although the best stories were good enough that I am tempted to bump it up another half-star show less

Awful. Just terrible. Overly dramatic, preachy, boring, pointless, painful. Some of the themes sound like something from a cult, and not only is the writing crap but the "plot" is absolutely unoriginal too. I also can't get behind the whole meaning of the book- maybe this is because I'm not religious but it really just seemed to me like a devout, bible-thumping Christian went on an acid trip, and this was the result- a not-so-subtle sermon about the glory of religion disguised as a self-help show more book. For a book that said a lot of things, it wound up saying nothing at all.

Also, just as an aside, the phrase "Personal Legend" is mentioned 56 times in this relatively short book. Yes, I counted. The book was so damn boring I had nothing else to do. 56 fucking times, and it still smacks of complete bullshit to me.

EDIT 12/10/15: I was leafing through my copy of this for some reason, and I noticed how many angry notes I made in the margins when I read it. (I normally don't write in my books, but I purchased this one and hated it, so I figured it couldn't do any harm.) I found my scribblings immensely enjoyable to read and furious, so I've included some of them below, should you want to know what the experience of reading this book was like (besides being slowly and painfully disembowelled). My gripes seemed to know no bounds...

I was angry with the outright preaching.

I was frustrated at the cheesiness of the terms.

I got so bored with it all that I just snarkily mocked it.

I was curious.

But most of all, I was just pissed off at how many times Santiago mentioned his motherfucking sheep, and you can see my slow buildup of fury.

In the end, I suppose the ludicrous amount of times sheep were mentioned in this book is fitting; after all, people seem to flock to it like a herd of them. For the time being, though, I'll just try to purge this stinking turd of a book from my mind forever. show less

[This is a review I wrote in 2009]

**In a class of its own, brilliant**

I am bound to cause controversy when I claim that this series is better than Harry Potter; better than the Northern Lights trilogy; better than Abhorsen; better by far than a whole host of similar genre novels - all of which I have thoroughly enjoyed, but I haven't enjoyed anything quite as much as this unputdownable series from Irish author, Michael Scott. You won't find even the smallest amount of space-filling or show more extraneous writing here - it is all fantastic. And, no, I don't know the author, I don't work for the publishing house, I just really love these books and would like to see the author receive the recognition he deserves. He's right up there with J. K. Rowling, with Philip Pullman, and a whole host of other world class fantasy writers in my opinion.

Josh and Sophie Newman, twins, ordinary American teenagers until their latent magical powers were recently recognised by six-hundred-year old Nicholas and Perenelle Flamel; these two are absolutely vital in the quest to save civilisation and prevent the Dark Elders from seizing ultimate power and destroying vast swathes of the world and its inhabitants. Josh and Sophie are the world's last and only hope.

'The Magician' is book two of the series, following on from 'The Alchemyst'. The Codex is the key - the ancient book of Abraham the Mage - Nicholas and Perenelle need the book to enable them to keep renewing their spell of immortality but the book has already been snatched from their grasp by Dr. John Dee, working on behalf of his dark masters, some of the most powerful Dark Elders in the universe. However, Nicholas and the twins managed to hold onto the last two pages and these are vital to unlocking the secrets of the book and the Dark Elders cannot act without them. Sophie's magical powers have been awakened but Nicholas now hopes to find a way to have Josh's powers awakened too. These two, he is convinced, are the twins of legend; twins with auras of gold and silver which together makes them pretty nigh invincible. This brother and sister, it is written in the ancient Codex, will have the power to either save or destroy the world, but they are new to this underworld of magic, their powers are yet young and they will need to be trained in the elemental magics and learn a lot very quickly. Can Nicholas and the extremely ancient (yet still youthful) vampire warrior Scatty teach them enough to protect themselves? Not only are they fighting against the magic of the powerful Dee, but now sly and cunning Niccolo Machiavelli has combined forces to capture the missing last pages of the Codex. Will it be too little too late for Perenelle who has been captured and is held prisoner by magical beasts on the island of Alcatraz? Will Josh and Sophie put their trust in Nicholas, or will his limited revelations and his lack of openness lead the twins to question their faith in the ancient Parisienne?

Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant. Start with 'The Alchemyst'. For ages 11+ but can be enjoyed by all ages. I hope you enjoy them as much as I did. show less