The Accidental Alchemist (Wheeler Large Print Cozy Mystery), by Gigi Pandian
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The Accidental Alchemist (Wheeler Large Print Cozy Mystery), by Gigi Pandian
Ebook Download : The Accidental Alchemist (Wheeler Large Print Cozy Mystery), by Gigi Pandian
Unpacking in her new hometown of Portland, Oregon, herbalist and reformed alchemist Zoe Faust can't help but notice she's picked up a stowaway. Dorian Robert-Houdin is a living, breathing three-and-half-foot gargoyle ― not to mention a master of French cuisine ― and he needs Zoe's expertise to decipher a centuries-old text. Zoe isn't so sure she wants to reopen her alchemical past . . . until the dead man on her porch leaves her no choice.
The Accidental Alchemist (Wheeler Large Print Cozy Mystery), by Gigi Pandian- Amazon Sales Rank: #7478212 in Books
- Published on: 2015-06-17
- Format: Large Print
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 1.00" h x 5.50" w x 8.30" l,
- Binding: Paperback
- 473 pages
About the Author Gigi Pandian (El Cerrito, CA) was awarded a Malice Domestic Grant for Artifact, which was named a USA Today bestseller and a Best of 2012 Debut Novel by Suspense Magazine. Gigi has served on the Board of Sisters in Crime's Northern California Chapter and is a member of Mystery Writers of America.
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46 of 48 people found the following review helpful. too many issues to recommend By B. Capossere The Accidental Alchemist by Gigi Pandian is the first in a new mystery series; unfortunately, it didn’t leave me much interested in reading the next two. Pandian has some decent ideas to work with, but issues with plausibility, pacing, choice of detail, and style had me thinking about giving up from about the halfway point on. To be honest, had it not been a review book, I almost certainly would have, making this one a “not recommended” from me.Zoe Faust, a centuries-old alchemist who specializes in plants, has just relocated from France to Portland, seeking, she says, a more normal life. Normal, however, is not in the cards, something she quickly realizes when out of her just-uncrated belongings hops a living gargoyle, one who tells her he is slowly dying and she—thanks to her alchemical knowledge—is his only hope. The gargoyle (Dorian Robert Houdin) would be bad enough, but soon Zoe is embroiled in a murder investigation and then an attempted murder investigation. Throw in a troublesome yet needy teen boy, and things quickly go from bad to worse and from worse to potentially disastrous, if not fatal.Stylistically, the language is generally flat, simplistic or just plain awkward. Exposition or historical tidbits are often clumsily inserted into the text, more interruptions than digressions. Plus, there are several stylistic tics that just got to me after a while, such as Dorian’s constant “Mon Dieu!” exclamations. Somewhat in that same vein was the odd amount of page-space/detail given to food in the novel. Dorian is a gourmet chef, while Zoe is a committed vegan/herbalist, one who believes strongly that one’s diet is essential to one’s physical and mental/spiritual health. Which is fine, but at times I felt like I was reading not characterization but propaganda (and I say this, by the way, as one who has been a strict pesco-vegetarian for over 30 years). At one point one of my notes simply says, “Enough with the food!”. In her afterward, Pandian offers up some recipes, and I wish she had done just that and removed about 90 percent of the food details in the actual narrative. Pandian also had a habit of repeating certain lines (not verbatim but concepts).Beyond the style issues, I also had several problem with the plot, the most frequent being a lack of plausibility. One example is when Zoe is not allowed in her house because of it being a crime scene, but even though she is at least a person of interest (and perhaps an actual suspect), she’s allowed to stay in her trailer fifteen feet from the taped off area. This sort of problem arose again and again, making the entire work feel not fully thought out or closely edited in ways large and small.While Zoe is likable enough, I never fully bought her as someone with hundreds of years of life experience, either in her thoughts or her actions. Other characters were either too obtuse too often, were too coincidentally knowledgeable in relatively arcane topics, or were, like Dorian’s “French-iness” more caricature than richly developed realistic people.I don’t like to belabor flaws, so I’ll stop there. As always in these cases, I wish I could be more positive about a work that an author obviously put their heart into, not to mention their time and sweat, but in this case, that wasn’t enough. Not recommended.(originally appeared on fantasyliterature.com)
33 of 35 people found the following review helpful. I struggled through this one By Yzabel (Note: I received a copy through NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.)An interesting premise, but one I had trouble stayed focused on, and I just could never push myself to read more than a chapter or two before switching to something else.The first chapters, with Dorian popping into Zoe’s life, his predicament, the book that needed deciphering, hinted at a good modern fantasy story. Unfortunately, the mystery that followed was too flat, and took too long to properly unveil. It could have been more of an adventure, yet it wasn’t. There wasn’t even that many alchemical concepts and knowledge to munch on.I’d chalk a large part of this to the main character going around in circles about some things, always recalling her ability with plants, how she was not a night person, needed her healthy foods, etc. There was more cooking and vegan recipes than actual alchemy here. I know they say alchemy kind of started in the kitchen and all that, but the metaphor didn’t bring much to the story for me. I mean, it’s the Accidental Alchemist, not the Accidental Cook, so…In turn, the sense of urgency got lost somewhere along the road. After a murder and another murder attempt, with Zoe having the potential to be seen either as the culprit or as the next victim, I would have expected more tension. When clues finally started appearing, and Zoe at last started taking them into account, I was past caring, and just wanted to finish the novel to see if Dorian could be saved.The ending, by the way, was too rushed to my liking. I don’t have anything against McGuffins and McGuffin-plots used to introduce deeper, larger stakes; but I tend to feel frustrated when a story begins with such a plot, goes on reminding us regularly that it’s important, then brings a quick resolution after having focused on something completely different. It just makes me stop caring. (I’ll be honest, though, and mention that while I was reading this book, I was also reading another one that suffered from the exact same problem of “rushed ending”; I suppose they slightly “tainted” each other for me in that regard.)(A minor quibble as well regarding Dorian’s speech patterns: speaking as a French expat living in the UK, seeing bits of French thrown in the middle of sentences is definitely weird. Whole sentences or exclamations, all right—it’s only natural to start speaking in your own language, before remembering you should switch to another one. But in my own experience, when this happens, we usually tend to stop and start again in English. For instance, I haven’t heard any other French expat finishing an English sentence with “n’est-ce pas”, so when the character did it, it kind of felt like “Hey, here’s a reminder I’m French”. Not needed in my opinion.)On the bright side, I still think the basic idea was great, and I liked Dorian’s character in general, as well as the questions his existence raised: how he came to be, sure, but also how other people perceived him. When he recounted having to pass for a disfigured man who only worked for blind cooks and refused to let anyone else in the room, so that he could do what he loved without people freaking out, that was awfully sad—and a bit reminiscent of relationships such as the ones between Frankenstein’s monster and De Lacey. I always like when similar themes arise in a story (even though it was underexploited here).
24 of 26 people found the following review helpful. Pedestrian, a bit annoying, I wish I'd bought it used By lumindanu Beach read. There really isn't much here that is intriguing, the writing is workmanlike, but it doesn't transport you into another world. The characters are pretty clichéd, even the gargoyle.And the vegan propaganda (beat me over the head with a stick for the whole book), incredibly tedious. I LOVE to cook... but the book doesn't wax lyrical about the vegan cooking, it preaches and bores.... wait, what is this review of a mystery doing talking about vegan cooking?.... that's my point exactly.Having said all those snarky things, it still kept my interest, to the end. I finished it, and just felt like ... this Could have been so much Better.
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