Bibliographic record
Abstract
Scott, Michael. The Enchantress, New York : Delacourte Press , 2012. Print. Michael Scott's sixth, and final, book in his Nicholas Flamel series crashes to its conclusion with The Enchantress. Credit is due to Scott for colourfully evoking and drawing together many of the very interesting figures and cultural artifacts from history and mythology but in conception his books can be overtaxing. Reading the glib dialogue between Shakespeare and Prometheus as their saucer-shaped air craft, a Vimāna, is piloted into the side of the Yggdrasil tree doesn't strain credulity - this is a fantasy adventure - so much as it tramples vigorously on any sense of cohesive aesthetics. While the essential conceit is fun and entertaining, at this frenetic late stage in the series, many portions of the text read like an over-thought riff on "who I would invite to have tea/mead/drink blood together if I could choose anyone - including anyone imaginary". The strength in this series comes from Scott's characterizations. The women in this series benefit particularly from Scott's ability to combine momentum and brevity with enthusiastically lively and rich depiction. Perenelle Flamel, Virginia Dare and Scatach have genuine presence and the narrative hinges on their impressive abilities and intrinsic motivations. Scott's principals could benefit from a little more corporeal vulnerability. All his characters have trained in their respective arts for millennia and the perils that they face seems less then perilous to such champions, no matter how high the stakes are alleged to be. Scott's carefully structured universes and their integral relationships have always been on a mysterious trajectory and the narrative revelation at conclusion of The Enchantress is resonant and satisfying. It has formulaic elements but Scott has established his characters soundly enough that their presence lends immediacy to the more epic, mythological structures that Scott is simultaneously pursuing. While the quality of pacing and aesthetic of this ambitious and lengthy series have fluctuated over the course of its six volumes, the conclusion is cohesive, action-packed and worth the journey. The Enchantress is the sixth and final book in Scott's The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel series. Recommended with reservations: 2 out of 4 starsReviewer: Matilda RocheMatilda spends her days lavishing attention on the University of Alberta’s metadata but children’s illustrated books, literature for young adults and graphic novels also make her heart sing. Her reviews benefit from the critical influence of a four year old daughter and a one year old son – both geniuses. Matilda’s super power is the ability to read comic books aloud.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.004 | 0.004 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.122 | 0.058 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".