Review: A completely unique blanket of magic, mystery and mayhem
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 10 21, 2013
What the hell did I just read!?The Tower's Alchemist is a complex story, with loads of new and not-so-new ideas being woven together into a completely unique blanket of magic, mystery and mayhem.Set during World War 2, the story takes us on an espionage-filled spy thriller based in an alternate history where magic is a normal way of life. Secret agents have magical abilities and use them to do their spy business.Isabella (a.k.a Emile, Noelle and a few other names) is our Protagonist and she's just a bag full of fun. She seemed to always be getting herself into trouble, oh yeah, that's coz conflict and trouble are both needed to progress the story. I did get a little sick of her internal dialogue and wished she'd shoosh and let me keep reading the action, but I know it was needed to give enough information to the reader. Sometimes it got annoying though.There were a lot of competing themes throughout this story, outside of the immediate action of the espionage we had emotional distress and uncertainty, family disfunction and secrets, different spy agencies mixing, death, love and it was all wrangled and wrapped up rather neatly by Alesha.I wasn't sure who to trust, much like Isabella herself, there was layer upon layer of lies and secrecy that had to be untangled to get to the truths, the issue of course is that this is only book one of a trilogy, so how many truths could really be uncovered?! Enough to keep me wanting to read book 2, that's for sure.The vampires that are mentioned in the book blurb are interesting. There wasn't any of this sex on a stick vampire...instead we're left with these vicious, gruesome beings that are warped and somewhere beyond humanity. I liked this return to horrific villains even if they were accompanied by some other, not so horrific baddies. Ultimately you got the impression that these guys were truly evil and would stop at nothing to get what they wanted, yet they all had their own drivers for what they wanted and it seemed realistic.I had issues (as some other reviews have said) with the multiple names for characters and how certain people called certain other people certain names while others called them something different. It was all a little confusing at times. I think this could have been a little clearer.The story worked well, it was interesting and very different to a lot of other books I've read. This was a solid book, one I think anyone who enjoys a bit of magic and history (though not always in the same book) will probably enjoy. This meshing of alternate history and magic with a bit of espionage was an enjoyable read.If I didn't get lost in a few places and Isabella didn't annoy me in a few places this would have easily been a 4-4.5 star book.A couple of things I noticed:Agate - does it need to be capitalised?! Other stones/elements mentioned aren't.99% - 'I watched her go into the kitchen ,and I wanted...' fix comma spacing.