fantasy book reviews science fiction book reviewsYA young adult fantasy book reviews Walter Moers Zamonia The Alchemaster's ApprenticeThe Alchemaster’s Apprentice by Walter Moers

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.

Walter Moerstakes 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 previous books because he provides enough background as the story flows. The Alchemaster’s Apprentice is really a wonderful, if slightly darker, addition to the Zamonian world.

Our hero, Echo, is a Crat, which is much like a cat only with special abilities: Crats can understand and speak any language, they have extreme grace and dexterity, and they have eidetic memory — they can remember completely any thing they’re told. Echo is swept into the life of an incredibly talented (but just as incredibly 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, Echo and Ghoolian take us on a month-long journey and a roller-coaster ride of a story.

I loved how Moers turns alchemy on its ear and invents whimsical combinations of science and nonsense that make sense in the story. He’s got a lot of fun ideas about how to make certain alchemical processes work and he draws an amusing comparison between alchemy and culinary mastery. The plot is deftly woven and I loved the way it contains so many elaborately detailed sidelights; For example, we get all the particulars about the types of feasts that Ghoolian prepares for Echo. Even when the story grows darker, it is written with a joy that keeps the grimmer aspects from putting off the reader.

I enthusiastically recommend 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 rely on puns and other cheap humor to entertain us. He just creates something sublimely interesting and fun.

Zamonia — (2000-2012) Young adult. Publisher: A unique novel set in a magnificently rendered imaginary country. Bluebear is a bear with blue fur and 27 lives, 13 1/2 of which he uses up by the end of the book, in a world as far removed from our own as can possibly be imagined — mysterious Zamonia. Captain Bluebear is a German cartoon hero, part sci-fi, part fairy-tale.

Walter Moers Zamonia: Captain Bluebear, Rumo, The City of Dreaming Books, A Wild Ride Through the Night, The Alchemist's ApprenticeWalter Moers Zamonia: Captain Bluebear, Rumo, The City of Dreaming Books, A Wild Ride Through the Night, The Alchemist's ApprenticeWalter Moers Zamonia: Captain Bluebear, Rumo, The City of Dreaming Books, A Wild Ride Through the Night, The Alchemist's ApprenticeWalter Moers Zamonia: Captain Bluebear, Rumo, The City of Dreaming Books, A Wild Ride Through the Night, The Alchemist's Apprenticefantasy book reviews science fiction book reviews

Author

  • John Hulet

    JOHN HULET is a member of the Utah Army National Guard. John’s experiences have often left a great void that has been filled by countless hours spent between the pages of a book lost in the words and images of the authors he admires. During a 12 month tour of Iraq, he spent well over $1000 on books and found sanity in the process. John lives in Utah and works slavishly to prepare soldiers to serve their country with the honor and distinction that Sturm Brightblade or Arithon s’Ffalenn would be proud of. John retired from FanLit in March 2015 after being with us for nearly 8 years. We still hear from him every once in a while.