Book Review: The Amulet of Samarkand, by Jonathan Stroud

This cover refers to The Bartimaeus Trilogy because the fourth novel in the series hadn't been written at the time of Samarkand's original publication.

In the early 2000s in London, magicians rule government, commerce, and the upper echelons of society. They summon spirits of various types and changeable shapes to do their bidding and bind the 'demons' to their will through the use of magical pentacles and incense. Magicians oppress nonmagician 'commoners' with magic, the occult source of which is unknown to the commoners. But the relative stability of magicians' cushy jobs and lifestyles is about to change-- forever.

Jonathan Stroud's Bartimaeus Sequence is a series of three novels— in order, The Amulet of Samarkand, The Golem's Eye, and Ptolemy's Gate— and a side novel, The Ring of Solomon, which can be read before or after the main novels. The Sequence's overarching plot involves the rise and fall of London as a magical world power in an alternate universe where the British Empire stayed in power due to magical influence. Other players in the political game include formerly glorious Prague and the American colonies. The American war for independence never occurred; neither did World War II and other subsequent wars. The Great War (World War I) occurred differently than it did in "our" universe. Other differences between "our" universe and that of the Bartimaeus Sequence: personal computers, cellular phones, and television do not exist; the invention of automobiles and other motorized transportation was helped along by magic.

The story of the first book in the Sequence, The Amulet of Samarkand, begins with Bartimaeus' summons by an eleven-year-old boy named Nathaniel, the apprentice of a magician who works as a minister in Parliament. Nathaniel charges Bartimaeus to steal the titular amulet from a powerful magician, Simon Lovelace, in order to exact revenge on him for an event that occurred a few years prior to the novel's beginning. Unbeknownst to Nathaniel and Bartimaeus, Lovelace has sinister plans for the amulet. Its theft causes a great deal of trouble for Samarkand's major players, which Nathaniel and Bartimaeus are left to sort out as the novel progresses. 

The whole of the Bartimaeus Sequence is narrated largely by the eponymous character, a spirit called a djinni. (Other types of spirit include imps, foliots, afrits, and marids. Djinn fall between foliots and afrits in power.) Bartimaeus, like all spirits, can change his form at will; throughout The Amulet of Samarkand, he takes on the guise of a pigeon, a blackbird, a scarab beetle, a desert cat, a gargoyle, a gecko, a field mouse, a fox, a crocodile, and a young Egyptian boy. Bartimaeus is snide, witty, and at times somewhat unreliable as a narrator. In one instance, he has an altercation with an imp, but instead of explaining it in the text, he replaces it with "polite asterisks". He often includes humorous footnotes as though leaning against the fourth wall and speaking to the reader in an aside. In one footnote, he mentions that footnotes are "the best [he] can do for [the readers]" since humans can't keep up with more than one story simultaneously like djinn and other spirits can. [1]

[1] As Bartimaeus might say, now you're getting the hang of it.

The Bartimaeus Sequence deals with themes of obsession, especially obsession with power. Bartimaeus often takes the form of Ptolemy, a young Egyptian boy who was one of Bartimaeus' former masters. Ptolemy died over three thousand years ago; that Bartimaeus remembers him well enough to take on his form consistently shows an underlying need to fell connected to him. Likewise, other characters in the Sequence have obsessions: Nathaniel is obsessed with gaining power; and Kitty Jones, a nonmagician girl who is introduced in The Amulet of Samarkand but who does not make a major contribution to the plot until the Sequence's second book, The Golem's Eye, is obsessed with revenge. Other spirits have obsessions as well: the djinni Jabor is obsessed with hunger, and the djinni Faquarl is obsessed with overthrowing the magical system of slavery that has controlled spirits since the time of King Solomon. 

Stroud's purpose in writing the book is to warn against the abuse of power. Magicians are depicted almost universally as evil people with an unchecked desire for power. Even Nathaniel, who Bartimaeus compares to the conscientious and curious Ptolemy on more than one occasion, becomes corrupted by power when he takes on the magician name John Mandrake. Bartimaeus goes so far as to pejoratively call Nathaniel 'John' when he believes the boy is acting too much like the adult magicians.

I'll be frank and somewhat cliché: when I first read Samarkand in seventh grade or so, it completely changed my life. I had never experienced the urban fantasy genre before and Samarkand opened my eyes to a genre I describe to outsiders as "elves with cell phones". It inspired me as a writer and a reader. But, like Bartimaeus during his first dismissal from a pentacle, I won't "bother with any more special effects". I'll let you experience the world of the Bartimaeus Sequence for yourself. 

[2] Well, I did warn you it would be cliché.