Kitty completes the trinity of main characters, and gives our third point-of-view, that of a commoner fighting the oppression of the magic users. At first eager, then disillusioned, and in the finale more enlightened than any one, she provides a good balance to the goings on of Nathaniel and the upper-class of magicians. If you know a boy between 10 and 13 (or younger, if you like reading aloud), give him this book for Christmas. This is not to say that girls will not find it enthralling too; just that the sort of cynical derision Bartimeus displays towards his youthful master, and magicians in general, chimes so well with the mindset of so many boys of around that age that they'll be demanding the next books in the trilogy for their birthdays. Having said that, I can't wait for volume two either. The other half of the story shows how the apprentice, Nathaniel, was torn from his parents as a five-year-old and dumped in the household of an uncaring master to be force-fed with magical learning. You are just beginning to think you understand how the magician politicians of this world grow up so nasty, when Nathaniel suddenly - albeit arrogantly - begins to display some decent qualities.

Not since Gulliver's Travels has a children's writer managed to combine a thrilling tale of magic and adventure with such deliciously pointed comedy… Stroud's sinister world is imagined in baroque and energetic detail…" Over the course of these three books, our three heroes change and mature, taking us along on a thrilling ride full of witty humor, scathing sarcasm, melodrama, tragedy and pathos. Jonathan Stroud's 2004 Boston Globe-Horn Book Honor Book acceptance speech". The Horn Book Inc. 1 January 2004 . Retrieved 17 July 2021. Stroud's use of footnotes, far from being distracting is actually quite infectious. Bartimaeus, in the manner of a quietly comic George Burns, well aware of his own comedic skills, steps out of character and out of the story in the footnotes, to offer his own sotto voce observations and asides directly to the reading audience. Judiciously sprinkled throughout the novel, Stroud has kept their number and length at exactly the right level to ensure the high-speed plot is not dampened.Short-listed for the British Book Awards, 2004; the WH Smith Teen Choice Award (UK) 2004; Deutscher Jugendliteraturpreis (German Youth Literature Award) 2005. Stroud lives in St Albans, Hertfordshire, with his two children, Isabelle and Arthur, and his wife Gina, an illustrator of children's books. I am really into children's books, YA fantasy, it´s so easy to consume in between, so interesting to see how the same tropes and ideas are used in easier to understand contexts, how humor is executed, and how the characters perform in contrast to the adult comedic fantasy, etc. and what should I say, many of these works are much better than average, not bad, novels just for adults. Because kids and teens don´t like getting bored with bad writing, so everything has to be even more perfected than for older readers. I know they were trying to keep it to one book, but I feel like too much was left out, too much was rushed. All the major, important events were kept, but most of Nathanial's story, and a lot of the fun, minor details got left out. For the sake of brevity, I suppose. It was, however, a fine enough book, more like a good overview of the original than an equal to it. The whole artwork is superlative, with characters - human, magical or otherwise - simply and well defined.

The novels are set in an alternate history, with the effects of magic, magicians, and demons having resulted in many changes, but with many countries, cities, events, and people from actual history. In particular these changes are reflected in the contrast between modern aspects (such as electricity, laptops, and cars) and older ones (colonial-era weapons, including muskets). The books incorporate references to various world mythologies and folklore, such as the Arabian Nights and Homer. On the other hand, I might be wrong about that last bit. I’m not sure how receptive I would have been to the idea of a “hero” like Nathaniel, who is clearly on the path to the Dark Side, or whatever. The Amulet of Samarkand is a delicious, fast-paced lightweight reading confection that can be recommended to readers of all ages. I'm off to find a copy of The Golem's Eye. Nathaniel is a boy magician-in-training, sold to the government by his birth parents at the age of five and sent to live as an apprentice to a master. Powerful magicians rule Britain, and its empire, and Nathaniel is told his is the "ultimate sacrifice" for a "noble destiny." In modern England, all the politicians and noblemen are magicians, and everyone else is a commoner. The story begins with a young but gifted apprentice magician summoning a djinni (genie), Bartimaeus. He sends Bart. off to steal the Amulet of Samarkand. This sets in motion a chain reaction of events that are perilous and fantastical and ultimately build up to a big climax. Eventually you learn why Nathaniel wanted the Amulet stolen. By beginning with the theft, the story avoids a slow beginning. The story shifts point of view between Bart. (first person) and the boy Nathaniel (third person).

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Of all the odd things to find in a modern, present-set, book, the author goes in hard on who, Disraeli or Gladstone, was the greater Prime Minister. Learning that Bartimaeus: The Amulet of Samarkand is the story of a young apprentice magician, cruelly bereft of his parents and lonely and neglected in his foster home, we may feel that we are in over-familiar territory. Stroud’s novel, however, is very different in tone from the work of J K Rowling. Nathaniel’s parents were not tragically killed, but sold their little boy to the government (a magical hierarchy) to be an apprentice magician, knowing that they would never see him again. There is no comforting Dumbledore-type figure to provide a moral centre. The kindest character in Bartimaeus is Mrs Underwood, the wife of the magician to whom Nathaniel is apprenticed. Other than his drawing teacher, Ms Lutyens, from whom he is soon separated, she is perhaps the only person to show Nathaniel affection. In turn, Nathaniel expresses a love and loyalty to her that is otherwise all but absent from his life. Mrs Underwood’s failure to challenge her husband’s harshness and mistreatment of his apprentice, however, makes her seem somewhat weak and ineffectual. Notes: Too precious, wears, gets hard to care, its hero whines a lot, quite byzantine, excitement-lean, more filigree than plot. That and a whole lot more suggest this book is a faithful adaptation, cherishing the original and only making it more vivid.