Customer Reviews

Alchemist

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book is initially quite a complex and interwoven story dealing with a series of characters and situations connected with genetics and pharmacuticals. Each of these develops into an absorbing amalgamation of the central theme and until the middle of the book this works and I certainly couldn't put it down. A smattering of the occult graces the pages from beginning to end and this may be enough to get you through but by the end a familiar and somewhat cliched parody of many books of the same ilk becomes evident. Enkoyable enough but prepare for disappointment and a little frustration

This is what supernatual thrillers should be like! Set in a scenario that is all too real these days, this book has all that you need and more besides. If you on here reading this, chances are you already know who Peter James is, and his genre, and are just looking for recommendations. In which case, i say with feeling, grab a read of this.

this book definitely is one of my favorite holiday recommendations: a thrilling crime story, embedded in an interesting occult context and completed as a love story. You won't miss anything and enjoy it all!

One of the best reads for a long time. Stanic rituals, sex, suspense ...But it aint no script for some B movie. Read it but be prepared to be scared

for many years i have been a Koontz fan but have found characters and stories from last 3 or 4 books to be too unbelievable and even boring.First i read of Peter James was "The Truth" and am now on a mission to find all his other books."Alchemist" is easy reading,has a plausible story and keeps the pace going with good dialogue. It is horror without the vampires werewolves and dismemberments! Now reading his latest "Denial" and its the best to date!

For a generation of British schoolboys brought up on Dennis Wheatly a new star has appeared in the heavens. Peter James describes the dark forces behind so much of corporate culture. In Dennis Wheatly's day the Satanists were usually Nazis or Leninists. With the demise of these all too obviously totalitarian cultures the target list has diminished. For a while fanatical muslims provided the soft target for the creators of nightmares. The end of the Cold War saw opinion formers creating villains out of muslims: Robert Ludlum wrote about them; Schwarzenegger acted in films about them, and Willi Klaas suggested NATO turn it's military prepredness against Islam. But muslims are obviously suffering a severe pounding under the world's weaponary. The basic respect for truth enshrined in the Islamic message is too great for the religion to be really hated. No writer can be consistently successful by casting muslims as ignorant fanatics. The widely despised and detested Iran of the 'Salman Rushdie' fatwa becomes a bastion of liberal and progressive ideas compared with the Afghanistan of the Taliban (and perhaps TEXACO). It is widely rumoured that the Taliban leaders have enjoyed hospitality of Texas Oil millionaires. In the meantime bereaved and perhaps cynical widows and daughters undertake military training in the freezing cold mountains because they knew that someone had once built a university that would teach women in nearby Mazar-i-Sharif. The Iranians have women in the government. ALCHEMIST is a very topical book. At 'The End of History', with the eradication of obviously totalitarian dictatorships the corporate sector is the only arena for the play of good against evil. The arms trade is mentioned. But more important for the characters in the book are the life and death powers held by modern corporations. None of this is news to anyone who saw pictures of Hitler's rocket making bunkers in the Harz mountains. Slave labourers were drafted in by corporations and worked to death. Primo Levi is one of the best chroniclers of twentieth century science based capitalism. He experienced it's sharp end. If it is no longer necessary to use armed guards and barbed wire to keep the workers in the factories, that does not mean that armed guards and barbed wire have disappeared altogether. On the contrary the fiefdoms have proliferated. In an unregulated world of free markets any trans-national corporation can administer its own slave labour organisation. Mostly this is done by proxy, through militaristic regimes. Other forms of slavery exist. Addiction is the most basic. Liquor, tobacco, and pharmaceuticals are the mainstays of physical enslavement, while gambling and perhaps internet addiction are more in the spiritual sphere. ALCHEMY deals with the pharmaceutical industry. The corporate world is every bit as boorish as the author describes. The Satanic rituals are mere kid's comic stuff compared with the real hold that darkness and ignorance have over the corporate elite. Old time Satanists summon up the Devil, usually by the sacrifice of a maiden. The modern corporate boss will happily condemn a whole generation of Afghani maidens to the demons of poverty and ignorance at the mere stroke of a pen. A mere satanist who develops psychic powers is no match for Damma. Light wins over Darkness. The author maintains the interest of the reader by a high body-count, and a fairly precise description of much of modern corporate psychology. The settings in the novel are mostly upper class, but that is no problem. In a past era Dennis Wheatly was read widely. It's also fairly true that interest in the occult has few class or even racial barriers. The classical 'Black Mass' and reversal of good symbols to become evil are standard for the genre, and transcend cultural barriers. After reading this book it is all too easy to imagine that every corporation has its resident satanists and dowsers. And in the Far East you never pass a large building without its cabbalistic symbols and runes.