Micah Nathan, Gods of Aberdeen

Gods of Aberdeen By Micah Nathan

Sixteen years old orphan Eric Dunne leaves his second cousin's home in New Jersey to attend Aberdeen University in Fairwich, Connecticut on an academic scholarship. To help relieve some of the costs, the teenage genius works at the school library under the guise of Cornelius Graves, a weird sort rumored to be investigating the immortality legend surrounding the Philosopher's Stone.

Because Eric is proficient in Latin, senior student and research assistant Arthur Fitch recruits the freshman onto the team of Dr. William Cade, also pursuing the Philosopher's Stone. With fellow student researchers Howie Spacks and Dan Higgins, they conduct experiments, but one alchemist test goes awry killing Dan. Eric is stunned by the death, but also remains hooked as knowledge is everything to him although he has not quite yet attained the obsessed level of the rival professors or Art who all three blithely keep working as the show must go one.

This is an interesting look at the end all pursuit of knowledge at any cost (a modern King Solomon) including death. Though the sidebars involving a female interest seem unnecessary even on a free wheeling campus like this one, the key players including that coed are fully developed especially the eccentric fixated professors and the senior. However, in the end this allegory belongs to Eric who has obtained an education the hard way.

Harriet Klausner