While it bears some resemblance to other narratives of the underdog sorceror's apprentice (Harry Potter leaps to mind), this is different. For while Bartimaeus is to a certain extent an unreliable narrator whose every utterance should not be taken at face value, he does pinpoint the sins, foibles and vanities of the human race and especially of the magical elite, whom he knows intimately from long experience. In this respect, he is similar to C.S. Lewis's demon Screwtape--although Bartimaeus would not care for that particular comparison. urn:lcp:amuletofsamarkan00stro:lcpdf:ba910a4e-9008-4f1b-9d99-40635be14489 Extramarc UCLA Voyager Foldoutcount 0 Identifier amuletofsamarkan00stro Identifier-ark ark:/13960/t4gm8vh2h Isbn 078681859X Lccn 2003049904 Ocr tesseract 5.3.0-3-g9920 Ocr_detected_lang en Ocr_detected_lang_conf 1.0000 Ocr_detected_script Latin Ocr_detected_script_conf 0.9943 Ocr_module_version 0.0.21 Ocr_parameters -l eng Openlibrary_edition Start Media has optioned the film and TV rights to Jonathan Stroud’s fantasy series The Bartimaeus Sequence.

I don't usually reread books I didn't care for initially, This would be the first. Before I had any prominence or visibility on Goodreads whatsoever, my first review for this book drew a lot of heated opposition.I did enjoy it, I found the story very accessible but it still gave enough depth to build the world and get to know Nathaniel and Bartemaus. The main protagonist of the book Nathaniel is an apprentice. He is under the surveillance of a scrawny, not-so-powerful mr. Underwood. Soon he gets into enemity with Simon lovelace - a hedious magician thriving on want of power. And in process of seeking revenge he gets intertwined between far large conspiracy than he could ever imagine. so he summons a djinni to help himself.

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). We may feel sympathy for the hero of Bartimaeus; a lonely, friendless young magician, subject to outrageous repression and unkindness by the adults around him, but he is not an overly sympathetic child. Far superior in ability to his mediocre master, he studies advanced magic in solitude and secrecy, for motives that are not pretty, however understandable. 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. The demon Bartimaeus is disgusted to be successfully summoned by the ambitious twelve year old and, even more so, when Nathaniel compels him to undertake a dangerous and difficult mission. Their relationship is not cosy, but governed on either side by fear and constraint. The perspective of Bartimaeus, the millennia old demon who relates a great part of the narrative, provides a cynical, humorous and entirely unsentimental view of events. Jonathan Stroud's 2004 Boston Globe-Horn Book Honor Book acceptance speech". The Horn Book Inc. 1 January 2004 . Retrieved 17 July 2021.Within the first few sentences my heart sank. Oh no, I thought, fanciful purple prose attempting to set a magical aura about the opening scene. I find it amusing how many people compare this book to Harry Potter. Yes, they both involve magic, but that's the end of the similarity. The very basis of magic in this book is that magicians are evil, scheming, and enjoy enslaving other beings. In Harry Potter Magic itself was pure, free to be used in any way desired. But that's all I'll say on that, as this is a review of Bartimaeus, not Harry Potter.

For those who didn't get the title, Simon Jones is probably best known by some as the voice of Arthur Dent in the BBC's TV and radio adaptations of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. But he does an excellent job of narrating audiobooks from what I've heard, particularly here. There is a bad wizard out there. Lovelace is power hungry, greedy, and just a nasty piece of work. He embarrasses this young, powerful wizard and this child is not playing games. He is now out for revenge against Lovelace. His journey of vengeance causes him to lose everything he ever loved... When he quietly masters one of the most difficult spells in a magician's repertoire, Nathaniel summons Bartimaeus, an ancient djinni (with a rather acerbic wit and a very dry sense of humour), and commands him to steal Lovelace's greatest treasure, The Amulet of Samarkand. Unaware that Lovelace was planning on putting the amulet to use in a treasonous coup to overthrow the government, Nathaniel finds himself trapped in a maelstrom of evil, espionage, murder and magical Royal Rumbles and is now pursued as the object of a merciless manhunt.One of the book's protagonists, Nathaniel, is one such apprentice, to the ineffectual Mr. Underwood. And the book's 2nd protagonist is Nathaniel's djinni of choice. the book's namesake, the delightfully sarcastic, witty, and mischievous Bartimaeus. The Bartimaeus Sequence [1] is a series of young adult novels of alternate history, fantasy and magic. It was written by British writer Jonathan Stroud and consists of a trilogy published from 2003 to 2005 and a prequel novel published in 2010. The story follows the career of a teenage magician Nathaniel (aka John Mandrake) and a five-thousand-year-old djinni Bartimaeus, whom he has summoned and nominally controls, through the alternative history of the peak of London's domination as a magical oligarchy.

The Bartimaeus Trilogy' gets 5 stars for all three books, not only for plot and story, but for Simon Jones' award-winning narration.The art in this volume really emphasizes Nathaniel's place as an outwardly-unremarkable preteen, boring facial features and all. I particularly liked it when the creators let him be angsty and vulnerable and sad like an actual young kid rather than trying to turn him into a "stoic" or "manly" figure. We’ll start with the plot. It is well developed and interesting enough on itself, but what makes it really shine is the narrative structure. The story is told from two perspective. One is a third person perspective which focuses on young Nathaniel, a magician apprentice. A very lonely boy, for magicians do not have children, they simply take apprentices (children of commoners and the parents seem not to have much saying in this).Nathaniel’s master cares nothing for him. Not surprisingly, this very intelligent boy can’t stand him but he likes his wife, whom he sees as a substitute mother of sort. That first part of the book was developed perfectly and I really felt for the boy- for most of the novel I quite worried about him even if I knew that it was highly unlikely for the protagonist to get killed. So, the plot is mostly focused on Nathaniel. The way the plot developed was something I quite liked. When another magician Lovelace offends Nathaniel, his mater doesn't stood up for him and Nathaniel is determined to take revenge. He does an unthinkable and summons a jinni on his own. It is an unheard of someone so young to attempt it, but Nathanial does it. Whom does he try to sum up? That brings us to our second narrative. I also enjoyed the speed at which I could read the book – it took me a couple of days instead of the week or so the original book by Jonathan Stroud would have done – and yet I don’t feel like I missed out on any story. The text is small. Yikes, so small I had to use my strong reading glasses. Again, this is actually a good thing as more of the story remains. 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.