The Alchemyst Analysis

Present-day San Francisco, The Shadowrealm, Paris, The Road First, the facts: the action takes place in present-day San Francisco (and other places) over two days in late spring: Thursday, May 31,...

Third Person Omniscient Who's telling this story? To be honest, we're not sure. It's definitely an outsider looking in, who can zoom into any character's thoughts at will. That makes the narrator a...

Adventure, Children's Literature, Fantasy, Coming-Of-Age, QuestAdventure, Children's Literature, FantasyThe Alchemyst is a mishmash of a few genres, just like it's a mishmash of mythological charac...

Engaging, Sympathetic, Humorous One of the best parts about reading The Alchemyst is that we get adventure, excitement, and great characters all wrapped up in a super friendly tone. We get to take...

Simple, Fast-Paced, Sensory The author's writing style is very fast-paced, descriptive (it is especially heavy on the sensory details—sights, sounds, scents, tastes, and feels), and simplistic, t...

Um, Mr. Scott? Do you know how to spell? It's alchemist, not alchemyst. Sorry, Shmoopers, the dude knew what he was doing. Alchemyst is simply an old timey way of spelling alchemist, and that old t...

I am legend.Death has no claim over me, illness cannot touch me. Look at me now and it would be hard to put an age upon me, and yet I was born in the Year of Our Lord 1330, more than six hundred an...

What's up with the ending is that it's just the beginning. Seriously, folks—those are the last words of the book:"It is ending, Immortal.""On the contrary […] It is now only just beginning." (4...

(2) Sea Level Despite the weird spelling of the title, The Alchemyst is a pretty smooth read. It takes place in present-day San Francisco, so we're used to the way characters talk to each other, an...