The Amulet of Samarkand (The Bartimaeus Sequence)

Product Information

Jonathan Stroud is the author of the best-selling Bartimaeus sequence, which is published in 35 languages and has sold six million copies worldwide.

Angered beyond endurance, Nathaniel decides to secretly accelerate his own learning and begins to plot his revenge against Lovelace. and though my sympathies often went to Nathaniel as the underprivileged apprentice, he's far from being a 'hero'. The book is duel-narrated by a first person POV from Bartimaeus, and a third person POV from Nathaniel. A wonderful and thrilling urban fantasy with strong elements of eastern mythology and the supernatural.To cap off the distant, flat narrative, and the distracting footnotes, Nathaniel and Bartimaeus are so remarkably unsympathetic, I felt none of the usual drive to finish a book as soon as possible because I really didn’t care much about what was going to happen to them. Bartimaeus has been dismissed in a cloud of misty smoke and brimstone to his own spirit world and Nathaniel clearly begins to struggle with much more adult ideas of what must be done with his new found reputation, position and rapidly advancing skills and powers.

The graphic novel does a nice job of trying to capture that ineffable character that is Bartimaeus, however the shortened format really can't do him justice. Through a scrying glass, Nathaniel sees Lovelace receive a package containing the powerful Amulet of Samarkand. 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.

The Amulet of Samarkand is an extremely potent magical artifact of a passively protects its bearer from magic-based assaults, even from the strongest magic and spirits. Lovelace would expend much effort to retrieve the amulet, even going so far as sending two of his strongest Djinn to break into the Tower fo London to break Bartimaeus out.