The Sorceress: The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel
August 1st 2009 01:06
Scott does not disappoint with his latest instalment of the series where new characters, both human and inhuman, are drawn into the conflict. The Dark Elders are running out of patience as the day Abraham’s prophecy is fulfilled draws closer. The pages from the Book of Abraham required for the Final Summoning have not been recovered from Nicholas Flamel and Sophie and Josh Newman, and without the pages the Elders can not reclaim the planet. The Flamels have opposed them for too long, and the Dark Elders are done waiting for their capture. John Dee has been ordered to destroy Nicholas, and Niccolo Machiavelli, Perenelle.
Though Perenelle has escaped her cell, she is still trapped on Alcatraz. While Machiavelli is making his way to her from Paris, The Old Man of the Sea and his fifty daughters have surrounded the island to prevent Perenelle from leaving. And there are other threats. Machiavelli’s contact in San Francisco, Billy the Kid attacks from across the bay and some of the slumbering nightmarish creatures among the horde that is with Perenelle on the island have come awake. She can not freely use her powers as it would accelerate her already rapid aging, but she is far from weak or defenceless.
Far away from his wife and also aging fast without Abraham’s Codex, Nicholas Flamel is still convinced that Sophie and Josh are the twins of legend that will prevent the destruction of the world and is determined that they received training in all the elemental magics. Sophie has air and fire at her disposal, but Josh newly Awakened, is armed only with Clarent, the Coward’s Blade, a treacherous weapon that has cursed all who have wielded it.
Nicholas has little choice but to leave the ruins of Paris and take the twins to the city he fears most: London, the heart of Dee’s power. For in London is where he will find Gilgamesh the King to teach Sophie and Josh the Magic of Water, though it may prove difficult. Gilgamesh, the first human immortal, rendered insane by the spell, believes Flamel was trying to kill him the last time they met.
Scathach is missing, but they are not alone against the Dark in London. Saint-Germain arranges them to meet his friend the Saracen Knight, Palamedes who has blended into modern London as a taxi driver. Palamedes agrees to help Nicholas as he does not wish the Dark Elders to return, though he objects to the Flamels’ methods; among them, to Sophie and Josh’s shock, bringing death and madness upon children over the centuries in their search for the legendary twins.
Nicholas and the twins arrive at Palamedes’ home in a well-defended car scrap yard and discover that he shares it with another immortal human, Shakespeare, who in his youth, had been a student of the Flamels’ but had betrayed them to Dee.
When Dee descends on the fortification, he has with him the terrifying Horned God, Cernunnos of the Archon race – a race that predates the Elders. It is Dee’s last chance to retrieve the pages from the Codex. Cernunnos has at its command the Wild Hunt; countless creatures with the bodies of enormous wolves and faces of the humans they had once been. If Dee fails his master again, he will suffer the same fate.
ADDITIONS
- The Sorceress takes place between Monday, 4th June and Tuesday, 5th June.
- The book cover shows Clarent and its twin, Excalibur, and in the corners, Areop-Enap, the Old Spider; the trident of Nereus, The Old Man of the Sea; the Horned God, Cernunnos; and Stonehenge.
- The book includes a preview of the next one in the series, The Necromancer, where Scathach’s twin sister, Aoife looks for her in San Francisco.
The Sorceress: The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel
by Michael Scott
Double Day 2009
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