The Alchemist

The Book in 1 Sentence

A book that makes no sense and should be burned as it does not but placate people with quotes that sound nice, but are completely ineffectual.

Brief Review

This book was raved as a favorite from Will Smith (Which is why I picked it up to begin with) and Colin O'Brady (The Impossible First) and I could not get through it. Legit it took probably 6 months of struggling to read it just to finish it and even then I only read it in between books because it is bad.

Synopsis

A Shepard boy decided that it is his time to leave the shelter of his home and tribe in Spain to take on the world himself. Meets a king that says his destiny (personal legend) is for him to find treasure at the Pyramids. He goes and has minor inconveniences that teach him absolutely profound lessons in a months time about life and love and the universe. With these lessons, he is able to perform miracles, fall in love to the perfect woman, and complete his destiny which was back home in Spain.

Why did I read this?

Will Smith is one of my favorite actors, pre-slap, and I loved his book. Having grown up watching his TV shows and movies, his opinion on media has a solid impact on me before I read this book. He said it was his favorite, so I picked it up and started it. Only to want to delete it from my brain. Put down, pick up, put down, pick up for months, until I read "The impossible First" by Colin O'Brady, and he quotes from the book as well. So I decided to finish it after I finished the book I was reading (I typically will listen to one book and read another at the same time since it'll take me a solid month to finish reading a book). It wasn't worth the read.

In-depth Review

This book is terrible. The forward talks about having issues with getting the book published, and I completely understand why. While a story does happen, it has much depth as a children's cartoon show. A bad one like a Scrappy-doo only episode.

The book is full of heavy-handed cliché life lessons that become overwhelmed by the other quotable life lesson you were just told.

This boy is at most 14 and in 3 days of crossing the desert he understands the desert life, the rules of the desert, the way to interpret the wind and sands, and is able to talk to the world about turning himself into the wind?????? There is so much wrong with the plot that I never even thought about till I started writing this because of the bullshittery of wannabe self-help that is thrust upon the reader. The boy has no adversity that isn't his creation, he is a savant that learns through osmosis and making things up, and finally, he knows everything because he is god (Heavily implied to be part of god in the final chapter). It makes no sense.

This is the story that Brian Griffin from Family Guy would write to exploit readers into thinking they were learning something (Watch the episode where he writes a book with blank pages where people help themselves). The story is lackluster at best, the mantra clichés will only help those who have to have instructions handed to them, and the writing itself is awful.

Don't be gullible and read this book. Spend your $12.99 or whatever on a box of donuts because I think those have more value than this book including if you bought the physical book and were stuck in the woods with no TP.

Rating

Just bad. Really bad. Please don't encourage anyone to read/buy/throw/eat this book. It is a 2.

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