"Five Elements: The Emerald Tablet" by Dan Jolley

The first four elements in this are fire, water, earth, and air, like normal (or like Greece). Now, place your bets on what Element #5 is!

-Quintessence

-Heart

-The Element of Surprise 

-Grimbo (E)

-Magic

-Boron

-Lifeforce

-Green

-Cold

-Metal

-Aether

-Wood

-Space

-Lightning

-Babies

-Awesomesauce

-Oregano

-Magick (with a K)

It's the last one, and their spelling annoyed me. The only books I've ever seen call it "magick" (with a K) and pull it off are The Adventurer's Guide to Successful Escapes and its two sequels, and it works for them because they have the right vibe for it. This doesn't.

Actually, when you consider that calling it magick (with a K) was invented by none other than Aleister Crowley the popularizer of the occult, this book absolutely does have the right vibe for that... though not the right vibe for me to take it in stride.

Which, yeah, this had too much occult stuff and magick (with a K) for me to enjoy. So I'm rating it 2 stars for that. The sole reason I finished this was that I wanted to know what Element #5 was.

And were this a videogame, I'd rate it: A stern T for occult, blood magic, blood in general, and violence.

By the way, the evil eyeless dragon thing on the cover (it does actually look pretty cool, which is why I picked the book up; yes, I judged a book by its cover and discovered that wasn't such a great idea) is called a null draak. I, even I, have come up with better names for evil dragons than that. Maybe the whole magick (with a K) thing is just Dan Jolley having bad naming sense.

This review barely conforms at all to my usual format, but if it did, all the trains of thought would suddenly have giant gaps. The review is enough of a mess as it is.

Also, apparently there was an actual thing called the Emerald Tablet, which had something to do with alchemy. Or something. There's also a pseudohistorical (i.e. someone made it up) book about lizardmen and Atlantis by the same name. 

(Endnote: In addition to it making me pine for Adventurer's Guide, after having played Undertale I also couldn't read "magick" (with a K) without thinking of the character Madjick. [EDITED 2/3/2026 to change link to the non-Fandom wiki])