The Amulet Of Samarkand (The Bartimaeus Sequence)

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The Bartimaeus Trilogy' gets 5 stars for all three books, not only for plot and story, but for Simon Jones' award-winning narration. 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.

This has everything, extremely good writing, a fresh, new setting that still hasn´t been assimilated by mainstream, many ideas from classic mythology, an alternative history uchronia setting, and just loads of innuendos and jokes that are definitively aimed at adults and kids alike. This is a FANTASTIC book, one that suggests that Harry Potter books don't have to be just a phenomenon, but could be a genre as well, as long as there are people out there who have the capacity, as Jonathan Stroud does, to create new worlds. While Harry Potter may always be on the top of the heap (better protagonists), don't make me choose between Dobby and Bartimaeus; it will only end in house-elf tears.Tropes show how literature is conceptualized and created and which mixture of elements makes works and genres unique: 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. 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. In the final book of the trilogy, published 2005, Nathaniel is a senior magician and a member of the ruling council, an elite class of magicians in the government. Bartimaeus is still trapped on Earth by Nathaniel and is treated with disdain, continuously weakening as he is not allowed to return to the Other Place. Meanwhile, Kitty Jones has been hiding undercover and completing her research on magic and spirits. She hopes that this will enable her to break the endless cycles of conflicts between djinn and humans. The main plot of this story is a conspiracy to overthrow the government which causes the most dangerous threat in the history of magic. Together, Nathaniel, Bartimaeus and Kitty try to save the city of London from this dangerous threat. 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.

Well i do not usually compare any book with Harry potter but this one here just made me do so. It was an amazing read. Nearly everything about the book is just great. I was talking to him about how I really liked that in his fantasy books involving magicians being separate and higher in social stature than ordinary people like you and me, Stroud pays more attention to what is happening socially with the paradigm, than just telling a story about a hot-shot wizard doing great things. And he seemed happy to know that I had spotted this in his books. That they took a different direction to most of the kids fantasy books out today involving the Harry Potter character, which has now practically become an archetype.Story-wise, this first installment in The Bartimaeus Trilogy is respectably good. However, the writing failed to appeal to me in many ways that, were they not already in my possession, I might not even bother with the next two books. Jonathan Stroud somehow manages to write with so much distance between the narrator(s) and the readers — even when he’s telling the story in first person through Bartimaeus. This is partly because Bartimaeus is vain and patronizing, but mostly because even the first-person narrative sounds like a third-person omniscient storyteller is telling it, only with “I’s”.

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. In Stroud's world, magicians have no power of their own - their power lies in the knowledge of how to summon (and enslave) spirits, like the djinni Bartimaeus, to do their will. These magicians are the proud, arrogant, entitled upperclass that pretty much oppress the commoners who work the city's factories and low-life jobs. They are bred for government, are not allowed to themselves breed, and thus take on apprentices instead to further the magical profession.Bartimaeus: The Amulet of Samarkand is a novel which successfully bridges the divide between children’s and adult fiction. The story of an ambitious young demonologist and an ancient and exasperated demon, it is a challenging and sophisticated read for young readers of perhaps 12 years and upwards and a witty entertaining and fast-moving adventure story for adults. At the tender age of six years, Nathaniel is taken from his parents and apprenticed as a learning magician to Arthur Underwood, a minor functionary in a dark and fantastical English government. This bleak London's parliamentarians and upper crust are members of a greedy, self-serving ruling class of magicians and everyone else is disparagingly referred to as a "commoner". When Nathaniel encounters Simon Lovelace, a brutal, ruthless magician whose ambition knows no limits, Lovelace chooses to openly display his terrifying power and publicly humiliates Nathaniel while Underwood stands meekly by doing nothing to defend his young charge who has barely begun to learn the rudiments of his magical craft. Angered beyond endurance, Nathaniel decides to secretly accelerate his own learning and begins to plot his revenge against Lovelace. 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

Bartimaeus reveals to the reader the presence of an endless cycle wherein magicians summon spirits, magicians rule over commoners, spirits spread magic throughout a city, some of the commoners gain a resistance to magic, the commoners rebel against the magicians, the magicians are overthrown and the spirits return to the Other Place until another magical empire rises to dominance. This cycle proves to be the main plot, which culminates in the overthrowing of London. Bartimaeus makes references to other magical empires, such as Baghdad, Rome and Egypt, all of which have fallen from dominance as well. Stroud is an amazing mixture of talent and epigenetics, writing and reading from a very young age on, then working as an editor for children's books, having built expertise with much reading and competence by writing many authors won´t achieve in their whole life. This mastering of the craft drips from every letter of his work. Among his most prominent works are the bestselling Bartimaeus Trilogy. A special feature of these novels compared to others of their genre is that Stroud examines the stereotypes and ethics of the magician class and the enslaved demons. This is done by examining the perspective of the sarcastic and slightly egomaniacal djinni Bartimaeus. The books in this series are The Amulet of Samarkand, The Golem's Eye, and Ptolemy's Gate, his first books to be published in the United States. 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. It's tempting to compare the book to the Harry Potter series. Young boy. Magic. Sneaking around. Breaking the rules. Stern teachers. But the similarities really end there.

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The Amulet is only mentioned during the events of The Golem's Eye once when John Mandrake (Nathaniel) attempts to use the fact that he saved the Prime Minister and gave him the amulet to evade being imprisoned in the Tower of London. 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. Character For me, they were pretty much 1-dimensional. The magicians are power-hungry, self-obsessed, egoistic, with really nothing to brag about except they could control the Spirits. Most of the time, they come off very easy to manipulate. As what Bartimaeus once said, they are all driven by power and greed. Or you know, something like that. According to the New York Times, a film adaptation, entitled Bartimaeus Trilogy: The Amulet Of Samarkand, was being planned. Miramax Films will finance the film, Mirage Enterprises will produce it, John Madden will direct, and Hossein Amini will write a screenplay. [1] Translations [ ] Access-restricted-item true Addeddate 2010-03-04 21:06:32 Boxid IA114714 Boxid_2 CH120120908-BL1 Camera Canon 5D City New York Donor