Fantasy Read #1: Mixing Potions!

Shruti Sinha
Jun 04, 2019 • 35 views

Now that we’ve criticized fairy tales so much (read my last article if you haven’t yet!), let’s look at some for adults—also known as books in the fantasy genre! You can guess that this genre happens to be my favourite. The books in the Fantasy read series are all themselves part of one series or the other.

Let’s start with…

1. The Potion Diaries by Amy Alward – Simon and Schuster UK Ltd.

Image credit: pinterest.co.uk

Welcome to the Kingdom of Nova. No, we don’t have to go back several hundred years. It’s right in the present, complete with the latest technological advancements of the world and a media hogging anything to do with the Royal Family all the time.

Here, society is divided into two classes—the Talented, and the Ordinaries. What’s the difference? Talented people have the ability to channel magic through an object. Ordinaries, are, well, just that.

Except some of them go on to become the greatest alchemists in the world, because it is their lack of magic that enables them to work with magical ingredients without the risk of contamination, and finally, enables them to build cures and even some bizarre recipes for their customers.

When Princess Evelyn tries to create a love potion for her crush but ends up accidentally poisoning herself with it, alchemists around the kingdom are called to find the cure in an age-old traditional competition called the Wilde Hunt.

Samantha Kemi is a budding alchemist and apprentice to her grandfather, one of the greatest alchemists Nova has known. But the last Wilde Hunt ended in their ancestor Cleo Kemi losing, and Zoro Aster, who had won the Hunt, used the prize money and the invaluable dose of Royal magic to set up his own company, manufacturing synthetic medicines as the official Royal potion-makers.

Now, the battle is between Samantha and Zain, the dashing young heir to the ZA Corp—who also happens to be the said crush of Evelyn—to find the ingredients for the top-secret, illegal potion by going on risky adventures across the globe, all the while fighting the King’s evil, power-hungry sister Emilia who’s bent on eliminating all the participants to make sure that Evelyn can’t be saved and she, finally, becomes Queen.

This complete three-book series, with all books published already, traces the action-packed, mysterious and fantastical journey of Samantha and her Potion Diaries as she explores love, friendship and family while mixing potions all along!

My comments:

I totally recommend this series to any fan of adventure and fantasy. Especially to those who are new to this genre.

The book could be categorized as Young Adult fiction, but even ten-year-olds would pretty easily get carried along in the flow, given the easy narration and storyline—not as complicated as other YA fantasy reads, I’d say. I mostly fell in love with the cover before buying it—yep, I do judge books by their covers, and I’m right most of the times, but anyway, that’s not the point! —and at 352 pages, it’s totally worth your money.