PLEASE BE AWARE THAT THIS REVIEW MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS FOR THE SECRETS OF THE IMMORTAL NICHOLAS FLAMEL SERIES AS THE ENCHANTRESS IS THE FINAL BOOK IN THAT SERIES.

The Enchantress by Michael Scott

Title: The Enchantress (The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel #6)
Author: Michael Scott
Genre: Urban Fantasy, Young Adult
Publisher: Doubleday (24th May 2012)
Source: Local Library
Blurb:

‘The two that are one most become the one that is all. One to save the world, one to destroy it.’

Nicholas Flamel is near death, and John Dee has the swords of power. The future of the human race depends on the twins of prophecy. But will they stand together?

Join the teenage twins as they . . .

* Access extraordinary powers and learn shocking secrets

* Journey back in time to the lost city of Danu Talis

* Battle ancient monsters – and each other

How will the legend end?

Step into the greatest legend of all time in the final action-packed thriller in the New York Times bestselling series.

Rating: *** (3 stars)
Review:

The Enchantress brings to an end The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel series by Michael Scott. I am a little sad to see this series finally brought to its conclusion. It is strange to think that this series began five books ago with The Alchemyst; that the series started on the 31st May and concludes on the 8th June, or thereabouts. So much happens in such a short amount of time.

The Enchantress brings the story of the twins to a close, and we finally get an answer to the prophecy:

One to save the world, one to destroy it.

And we get to see Danu Talis through the twins eyes. The Enchantress is full of revelations, some more surprising than others.It does, however, take a while to fall back into the story if you’ve not read The Warlock recently but it is still an enjoyable ride.

The plot of The Enchantress is really quite complicated, and it needs all five hundred and thirteen pages to unravel it, though I would have loved to see a couple more chapters at the end so I could have had a couple more i’s dotted and t’s crossed. Scott does a brilliant job weaving all the complicated threads together into a cohesive narrative that is easy to follow. I liked the fact that whilst I thought the book would be a complicated unraveling of threads when I started it, it wasn’t until I reached the end that I realised quite how convoluted it was. Scott must have had a good idea how the series was going to end when he started the first book, because having reached the end I am in awe of his plot crafting abilities.

I really liked the way Scott used the perspectives of different characters to tell the story, he does this in previous books as well but I think it worked especially well in The Enchantress. By using different perspectives Scott allows the reader to look at the bigger picture of the endgame in The Enchantress with ease, and at the same time remain invested in the characters and the events. I also liked it because it allowed me to reconnect with the characters from previous books and find out how their story ended in the series.

Josh and Sophie really come to power in this book, and their sibling relationship is definitely highlighted. In previous books they haven’t always agreed, and at times they have both found it hard to understand the other.In this book Scott really puts them to the test – the fate of the world is, after all, riding on their shoulders! Nicholas and Perenelle’s story also played out beautifully through the pages, and their story along with Dee and Dare’s, Scathach, Joan, Saint-Germain, Shakespeare and Palamedes’s, Odin, Mars, Hel, Billy and Machiavelli’s work as brilliant counterpoints to the twins’ story.

The resolution of the book – and the series – left me a bit cold to be honest. I’m not totally sure how it fulfils the first half of the prophecy – though it definitely fulfils the second half:

The two that are one must become the one that is all. One to save the world, one to destroy it.

That being said, the endgame of the book is really interesting and it certainly makes you question certain things about the previous books. The Enchantress is a good addition to The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel series, and it does a good job at tying up the loose ends.