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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Fiendishly Dark Zamonia, September 3, 2009
This review is from: The Alchemaster's Apprentice: A Novel (Hardcover)
Accompanied by dozens of illustrations by Moers The Alchemaster's Apprentice is the fourth Zamonia novel after The City of Dreaming Books ,which keeps to the same high quality as previous books. The series to this point has been far sweeping stories that explore the lost continent whether it be across the land or under it, however the latest entrant breaks from that mold as it stays in the just one place, which is the unhealthiest city in Zamonia, Malaisea, where the resident Alchemaster Ghoolian reigns over the sickly populace. The Alchemaster's Apprentice is the most intimate and shortest tale to date, but is no less entertaining for its brevity. As with all Moers books it centers on one character's life story, in this case Echo the Crat. A Crat looks like a cat but has the special ability of being able to speak to any creature and retain any knowledge told.
We meet Echo as he is starving on the streets of Malaisea since his former owner passed away. Ghoolian comes across the begging Echo and strikes a bargain to feed him for a month with the most sumptuous food from all over Zamonia. At the end of the month the Crat will give up his life in order for his fat to be rendered for the Alchemaster to use in his experiments. At the time it seems like a good bargain for the slowly expiring Crat, but he quickly changes his mind. In one sense The Alchemaster's Apprentice is still a tour Zamonia only it focuses on the culinary and magical sides of the world, which Ghoolian has been amassing for decades in his home. Ghoolian houses Echo in his ancient castle that holds as many wonders as the rest of Zamonia, many of which can no longer be found elsewhere.
This is not the bloodiest Zamonia tale, which was Rumo, but it is the most morbid of the lot as Ghoolian likes to perform taxidermy of myriad creatures and he is all about boiling creatures down to balls of fat along with having a deep disdain for most living creatures. Moers plays with the Ghoolian character trying to give him many sides to his dark face to keep Echo guessing what is truly inside him which works fairly well and leads to some good surprises towards the end. Echo explores the castle as well as the town where we get to meet a marvelous yet small supporting cast of odd creatures including a friendly ghost, a lonely toad, and a great Uggly Witch. I don't say Uggly to deride the character's looks, which while atrocious is actually her species name.
The Alchemaster's Apprentice is a dark fairy tale for adults that keeps you laughing even through the most gruesome of parts. The ending was a bit expected, but the journey to get there what the fun is all about. I give The Alchemaster's Apprentice 9 out of 10 Hats. I'd recommend reading at least The 13 1/2 Lives of Captain Blue Bear before this one; although all the Zamonia books are written as standalones with no main character reappearing yet having read previous volumes does help with knowing many of the references to different places and species. Moers shows that he is in nowhere near running out of stories for Zamonia and nor should he. I for one hope he can turn out as many novels as Pratchett has done with Discworld.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Marvelous, creative story-telling., September 18, 2009
This review is from: The Alchemaster's Apprentice: A Novel (Hardcover)
First, my hearty thanks to the translator. I saw Walter Moers's previous novel, The City of Dreaming Books, in the Berlin Airport in German. As a German linguist, I can't imagine how difficult it must be to translate prose like this. Simply amazing.
Moers takes us back into the world of Zamonia, but this time to a completely different city and with all-new characters. You don't really need to have read the first book because he takes time to re-establish your knowledge as the story flows. The Alchemaster's Apprentice is really a wonderful, if slightly darker, addition to the Zamonian world. Moers weaves a deft plot that is full of interesting, heavily detailed sidelights that really make for a wonderful read.
Our hero, Echo, is a Crat, which is much like a cat only with special abilities. Echo is swept into the life of an incredibly talented (but equally demented) Alchemaster, Ghoolian. An Alchemaster is something between a magician and an alchemist, combining equal parts artistic madness and scientific rigor. In the City of Malaisea, a wonderfully interesting relationship between Echo and Ghoolian takes us on a month-long journey and a roller-coaster ride of a story.
Moers once again plays with many different concepts and cobbles together a comprehensive picture of each character. His ability to turn concepts like alchemy on their ear, and to invent whimsical combinations of science and nonsense that make sense within the story, is truly remarkable. Moers has a lot of fun ideas about how to make certain alchemical processes work, and draws a comparison between alchemy and culinary mastery. Even when the story grows darker, it is written with a joy that keeps the grimmer aspects from putting off the reader.
I enthusiastically endorse The Alchemaster's Apprentice for young adults and adults alike. Walter Moers's talent for taking the mundane and making it magical is reminiscent of some of the early XANTH books by Piers Anthony, but Moers doesn't have to rely on puns and other cheap humor in order to entertain. He simply creates something sublimely interesting from what might seem like an overused subject in the hands of a less-skilled author.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent!, December 12, 2010
Got this on a whim because of the cover and reading through a few pages and don't regret it a bit.
How do you describe this book? It's a little bit of fantasy, comedy, haute cuisine and horror. I've never read anything quite like it and such books are not usually my type, but I got reeled in by the few sample pages I read.
It's about a crat (a talking cat) who makes a deal with the Alchemaster and his time with him. I won't spoil the story but you can read more if you want from the description and the other reviews.
There are a lot of fantastic creatures (top marks for author's imagination), nice comedic touches, and some horror. What is really good about this book is that the original was written in German and the translator has done a top notch job in translating not only the words but the nuances and the humor. They say that it's hard to translate humor across languages but the translator did just fine. After I finished this one I went back and read his older books and find that this book (his newest) is a much quicker read, and a better read. His older books meandered around a little (Rumo is 687 pages long) and sometimes took too long to get to a point or went off course. This new book is perfect, it kept my attention much better and I would say the writing (or translation) is much better too.
If you like cats, this book is perfect. What is also perfect is how he captures each creatures personality. Each creature's personality is described and written very well. You feel for, or against the creature, definitely. And great story lines inside the book, the crat (and you) get to meet different creatures, go to different parts of the castle that the Alchemaster lives in and experience all the wonderful and wonderfully terrifying events. The best part? The wonderful drawings which are spaced throughout the book showing the many creatures.
So if you want something different, like fantasy (but not the heroic kind), like cats, humor and cuisine, this one is definitely for you.
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