Submitted by ddiioonnaa t3_10jcwqe in books
I finished reading Paulo Coelho's The Alchemist a few days ago and it's not as good as people say it is imo. I tried to let the book sit in my head on what exactly am I missing and why I felt like I didn't like it. Now I understood why.
The book doesn't feel like it knows where it's going. It didn't feel like it had a path on where it will lead. It felt like the main character is just going and staying on a place and going to another to staying there again. Maybe I just wanted other plots to be solved than the main goal of the boy to expand the character/s more but it didn't have much side plots to tell.
The end goal feels forced into the boy than he actually wanted it to. The decisions of the main character most of the time is not even his. These literal strangers feels like they control what the boy needs to do. He doesn't feel independent. Even his "Ultimate Goal" is not his own idea. The end goal is not even that good either. He left a perfectly good life with a wife and a great job offered to him to go on a journey to get a box of gold and treasure.
I know the main message is to seek your goals or follow the destiny that you think is worth pursuing no matter what but it's presented in a way that everything felt forced on the main character and felt like he didn't have a choice but to do it because it's "for his destiny".
I just wanted it to post somewhere. Let me know what you think of the book. :)