Alchemy (Collins Flamingo) [Paperback]

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.

Margaret Mahy has a skill for weaving the supernatural and natural together, and this coming of age story fits nicely into her traditional style. All the elements are there: Roland, the teenage boy with a hidden potential, Jess who tries to stay invisible at school while keeping wondrous secrets. The various other players, villains and allies both affect these young adults with magic and everyday issues in their relationships. Mahy has written many delightfully rich books that I have been reading since I was a child, and while Alchemy fits the mold of her earlier books, it doesn't quite compare to them.

Roland is a teen who has made for himself the perfect image; he's got lots of friends, has the popular rich girlfriend and is well set to succeed in life. So what is he doing spying on Jess Ferret, the girl in class that nobody is friends with? And what is the secret Jess is hiding? Finding out will change his life forever. Roland quickly discovers that Jess is more than she seems-and that her strange research and interests are waking a part of himself that he has kept hidden for years from everyone. But Roland isn't the only one interested in finding out about Jess, and those that want to discover her secret may have sinister motives of their own. Roland may be Jess's only hope in thwarting the enemies that lurk in the shadows, but in order to do so, Roland must accept his own destiny and come into his own powers.

In theory this book sounds great. Classic Mahy. In actual execution the book just can't quite find it's mark. In some ways, it seems that Mahy is trying to create a male perspective version of The Changeover, one of her best stories. The problem is that there really isn't enough here to make the story really work. The pacing just doesn't work, some of the build up for Jess's secrets makes the truth of what we discover kind of lack luster. The lack of time spent on building up the romance between Jess and Roland, just leaves me feeling their relationship is kind of stuck in the story rather than naturally evolving. The villains are terribly one-dimensional and rather uninteresting-while I might not expect more of some writers, I know Mahy can and has done better by far. She doesn't need to resort to the black-cape mustache-twirling sort of melodrama evinced by the villain here.

Frankly, the themes don't play out either, the title, while relevant to Jess's interest in the subject, seems not to have much to do with the central story of the book. Thinking about what made The Changeover work, while this does not quite, I would have to say it has to do with several things. We never see real risk in this book-it's implied, but never quite shown. In The Changeover, the protagonist goes through everything she does to save her little brother, who is dying. Likewise, while Roland has a quirky single parent, they remain separate from his dealings with magic and with Jess-rather than an additional support base for Roland, his family feels more like a constant distraction. I don't find this to be one of Mahy's best efforts, and can't help but wonder if it is one of her older stories pulled out from the files and buffed up for publishing. It's not by any means terrible-and it has plenty of Mahy's trademark treatment of the paranormal and wonderfully creative descriptions of magic that isn't so much a separate force as a part of the world. But it's thin on plot and lazy on villain construction, so I can't give it more than three stars-particularly in comparison with something like The Changeover.

For readers, this is definitely a young adult book. It's a little mature and with certain relationships and viewpoints that probably make it inappropriate for a good portion of the preteen audience. If you like this book I certainly recommend you look into other Mahy titles, such as The Haunting, The Changeover and The Tricksters. For books outside of Mahy, you may want to try some supernatural horror like Stranger with My Face, or Down a Dark Hall by Lois Duncan.

Happy Reading! Shanshad ^_^

I really liked this book. It is now one of my favorites. It challenges you to think. Many of the ideas discussed in the book are open-ended for you as the reader to interpret, and it leaves you with a sense of deepness. This book opens your mind to many new ideas and thoughts, and really proves to be a pondering stimulator. Other than all this, of course, it has a great plot, and moves along at a great pace, leaving the end a mystery to the reader. You should definately read this.