There
are times in your life when you pray that magic is real and
wouldn’t you be shocked to find out that it is!
Steve Best is miserable. His mother is missing and people
keep saying she ran away. Steve is sure she didn’t -
wouldn’t! His father is depressed and has no room for
Steve and his grief. This Christmas, Dad is being sent to
the Orient and Steve is being shuffled off to his goofy great
aunt and uncle. Aunt Shannon is only interested her niece’s
notebook and her husband is so flighty that he may not even
know where he is. So when Steve is dumped off and Aunt Shannon
starts babbling about alchemy, Benu Stones and transformations
it confirms to him that she is nuts!
Then Aunt Shannon turns a clock into a lock and back again.
Then the black hats get rough, kidnapping Uncle Edward and
setting Steve up for the cops to chase.
I enjoyed the way that this book tumbled together while Steve
gets caught up in the only hope he can find. If Alchemy is
real, if his mother made a mistake, then she didn’t
run away from him! New ideas take him outside himself, changing
his outlook on his situation and how he faces the terrors
that now he has to chase instead of hide from.
When I figured out where the Ocean of Pieces is located I
just smiled. I’ve never seen a better metaphor for the
cold hard danger of the printed word, a different form of
alchemy, in the hands of the uninformed.
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