• Physik

  • Septimus Heap, Book Three
  • By: Angie Sage
  • Narrated by: Gerard Doyle
  • Length: 12 hrs and 6 mins
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars (1,879 ratings)

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Physik  By  cover art

Physik

By: Angie Sage
Narrated by: Gerard Doyle
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Publisher's summary

When Silas Heap unseals a forgotten room in the palace, he releases the ghost of a queen who lived 500 years earlier. Queen Etheldredda is as awful in death as she was in life, and she's still up to no good. Her diabolical plan to give herself everlasting life requires Jenna's compliance, Septimus' disappearance, and the talents of her son, Marcellus Pye, a famous alchemist and physician. And if Queen Etheldredda's plot involves Jenna and Septimus, then it will surely involve Nicko, Alther Mella, Marcia Overstrand, Beetle, Stanley, Sarah, Silas, Spit Fyre, Aunt Zelda, and all of the other wacky, wonderful characters that made Magyk and Flyte so memorable.

Want the complete series? Download Magyk: Septimus Heap, Book One and Flyte: Septimus Heap, Book Two.
©2005 Angie Sage (P)2005 HarperCollins Publishers

Critic reviews

"Excellent." ( Booklist)

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What listeners say about Physik

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars

Wonderful Series

As a mother of very young children, I'm always on the hunt for books that interest me, yet are kid friendly. (no cussing, vulgarity, etc) This series is wonderful. If you liked the other Septimus books, you'll enjoy this one as well. The narrator is very good (after getting used to him in the second book) and one that I enjoy listening to. Though I do wish the had kept the original narrator from the first Septimus book.

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7 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars

wonderful

this book was not only excellent writing, it was joy to listen to, could hardly talk to people 'cause it would interrupt. Totally reccomend it to all Fantasy lovers.

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5 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars

Ghosts, Cats, Dragons, Disapproving Queens, & Time

The third entry in Angie Sage's seven-book Sepimus Heap series, Physik (2007), begins with Septimus' feckless father Silas the Ordinary Wizard and his coarse "friend" Gringe the North Gate Gatekeeper (two of the many fallible adults whose mistakes make life interesting for Sage's child heroes and readers) "UnSealing" a Sealed room in the palace attic so that Silas may keep safe there his prized colony of sentient board game counters. By opening the Sealed room, the clueless men release two malevolent Substantial Spirits, the ghost of the wonderfully named Etheldredda the Awful, who has been waiting with her pointy chin, pointy ears, pointy shoes, and disapproving expression for 500 years to become Castle Queen again, this time forever, which may involve getting rid of any troublesome princesses in her way, and the ghost of her pet Aie-Aie, a red-eyed, snake-tailed, single-toothed creature with a penchant for spreading disease. Thus begins an exciting and unpredictable plot of multiple point of view characters and two time streams, one in the present and one 500 years in the past.

Sage introduces neat new characters, like the 14-year-old Hanseatic League Northern Trader Snorri Snorrelssen, who's come to the Castle of the Small Wet Country Across the Sea for the first time, partly in search of the ghost of her father. Snorri is great, with her attractive Scandinavian lilt, Spirit-Seer abilities, spunk ("No one told Snorri Snorrelssen what to do"), "white-blond hair," "translucent blue eyes" (Sage's fantasy world is quite white), and feline protector Ullr, a small orange cat by day and a powerful black panther by night. And the Last Alchemist Marcellus Pye, a selfish, decrepit, and senile 500-year-old who only breathes once every ten minutes and shuffles around under the moat at night looking for gold coins, is creepy and sympathetic.

Sage develops former characters in neat ways, too, like Uncle Alther and Alice Nettles, whose cross-existence romance is wistful and sweet. She does a bit more with the ghost of Jenna's mother, the assassinated Castle Queen, who is still not ready to Appear before her daughter. Spit Fyre, Septimus' pet dragon, is growing apace, needing more food, producing more droppings (and burps, farts, and snot, Sage indulging the child reader's sense of potty humor), and learning how to ignite his gassy breath. Sage's protagonist Septimus Heap, seventh son of a seventh son, the Apprentice to the ExtraOrdinary Wizard, Marcia Overstrand, grows, too. He is covertly interested in Physik, which Marcia believes is too close to the dodgy (if not Darke) Alchemy. In this novel the boy will learn everything he ever wanted to know about such subjects, in addition to Time.

Sage interestingly plays with time: "Time Glasses" through which people may step (or jump or fall) into "the liquid cold of time" and end up elsewhen; the vertiginous and identity-threatening aspects of suddenly finding oneself in the distant past; and the debilitating effects of living forever without youth. She also makes explicit the Rules of Ghosthood. Spirits must stay for one year and a day in the same place where they died, after which they may move around, but only to places they visited when alive. They may only be seen by people they choose to Appear before. And although they may pass through anything or anyone and vice versa, they intensely dislike the nauseating experience.

Sage writes a lot of witty lines (especially in context), like: "Ghosts must put up with the bad habits of the living," and "Even Alchemy Scribes had to sleep some time." And she writes many vivid and evocative descriptions (Sage's writing is more magical to me than Rowling's):

--"The barge was decked out in flags that fluttered in a wind that had died long ago."
--". . . the lingering smells of decaying spells …"
--"The low yellow stone building was ablaze with light, its wide lawns spread out before it with their fresh snowfall like a crisp white cook's apron."
--". . . there were things--soft, squishy things--floating in the water; he could feel the ends of his oars touching them."

Such rich writing outweighs Sage's few missteps, like similes whose anachronistic vehicles violate her fantasy world, as when Spit Fyre moves his tail back and forth "like a great windshield wiper," or as when Etheldredda's voice "has the penetrating quality of a dentist's drill."

Sage writes an archaic style to estrange the Castle of the past from her characters and readers. Although some of it sounds dodgy, like "Now, hie thee to the Great Gates, thee to the stables and thou, fools, take thy great flat feet to the river" (thee, thou, and thy should maybe be for singular cases), it often sounds fine, like "Whereupon Mary didst wail, like the pigs do wail when they see the meat cook's cleaver."

The reader Gerard Doyle is good, especially with Snorri's winning accent, Etheldredda's nasty voice, and Ullr's orange meow, but I still prefer the reader of the first book in the series, Magyk, because Doyle tends to put too much stressed out whining in the voices of the kids. This audiobook includes Sage's fun epilogue, "Things You Might Like to Know More About," to recount the fates or backgrounds of several characters.

Readers like me who were put off by the manufactured action and unpleasant character development and lack of consistency and charm of the second book, Flyte, should try this third one, because Physik is excellent. Moments like Jenna rescuing a plucked duckling from a scalding orange sauce and later falling asleep with it are charming; moments like Septimus walking into the Great Hall of the Wizard's Tower 500 years ago and deceiving himself that he's in his own time are moving. Readers who like imaginative and humorous YA magical fantasy with a Darke streak should enjoy Physik and the series in general.

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3 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

wish they would make movies from these books.

Would you listen to Physik again? Why?

i read these books to my kids and even my husband would stop and listen. i would compare these to the harry potter books. great imagination. great adventure. im 43 and plan to listen to all of the angie sage books. clean reading.

Who was your favorite character and why?

cant choose

What about Gerard Doyle’s performance did you like?

easy to understand and great expression

If you were to make a film of this book, what would be the tag line be?

continue in the love of wizards and imagination with septimus heap and his adventures.

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3 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    out of 5 stars

Physik

Bravo! For the third time!!!!!

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3 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    3 out of 5 stars

Into the looking glass

This was not my favorite in the series so far. It seemed like it took too long to get to the actual plot, and became tedious with far too many new, inconsequential characters added too quickly. I think think that a quarter of the story and several characters could have been left out. The last few chapters were full of updates and information about the characters that could have been avoided if the story had flowed correctly. I hope the wonderful pacing that made the first two books so good is reesablished in the next book. Not a bad Septimus adventure just, for me, a little too jumbled and watered down with to many extraneous events and characters. Onto the next....

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2 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars

A great 3rd book in the series

I really enjoy this series. It is very imaginative. And I do enjoy the narrator, Gerard Doyle, he make you "see" the story.

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2 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars

More exciting than Flyte

Books built around questing and escaping and time travel are difficult to pull off without luck and some kind of magic bullet, or in this case a dragon, a mirror and a magic tunnel. While the excitement is high, I tend to feel a little bit short changed by so much Deus ex Machina. Hence minus 1 star. And books that try to incorporate alchemy, but do no better than render it a standard modern parody or comic farcical sidekick of (usually science but in this case) medicine (physik), for me are automatically a two star deduction. At least Sage incorporates a significant amount of alchemical vocabulary, while missing the point.

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1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    3 out of 5 stars

Interesting, and well preformed.

Would you consider the audio edition of Physik to be better than the print version?

.Yes. It is easier to follow

What was the most interesting aspect of this story? The least interesting?

The aspect of time was interesting, but there was almost no magic.

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

YES!

Any additional comments?

Bit of a cliff hanger.

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1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Excellent series!

I've re-listened to this series so many times! I love how her descriptiveness draws me in and I can work blissfully for hours with my mind thoroughly engrossed in the narrative! A timeless piece for all ages!

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