The Amulet of Samarkand (Bartimaeus Trilogy , #1) (Bartimaeus, #1)

by Jonathan Stroud

[sa090]

Well this took way longer than it should tbh and it was just because of how unmotivated I was to read it for at least half of the book, only after Part Two's second half started did I find the motivation to finish the rest of the 200+ pages in a few hours compared to the 10+ days I spent on the first 200 pages which is such a shame because the book is very entertaining from there on-wards.

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Once the book started and the whole concept of summoning Djinn was introduced I was very interested to see how it'll be utilized in the book and while the beginning of it was interesting, everything that happened after till about chapter 23-25 was more on the boring side than I hoped. The story is told from two perspectives, Bartimaeus's and Nathaniel's. This transition between them is not a bad move at all, but the transition between them in the beginning IS what killed my interest until the earlier specified chapters revived it. It's not because the content was boring itself but the timing of its revelation made it as such.

For example and I'm being as vague as I can be to avoid spoilers, we see the specified reason for summoning Bartimaeus achieved immediately but before we can move on with that, we take a step back and go back to learn all about how Nathaniel became a magician in the first place and so many others things that should've been revealed before Bartimaeus fulfilled his mission, because after the amulet was in his possession I don't really care about this kid's autobiography, all I want to know is what happens after. Now if the events were reversed it would've been much much more enjoyable for me because at that point (for clarification that point being the amulet successfully stolen) wouldn't have happened yet for me to anticipate what comes after.

This issue is my main gripe with this book, I may be in the minority about it or it might just be me but this really annoyed me about it. Other than that I did hope for a little more world building given that the world is completely new to me and this whole magicians standing on the top of the world and not in hiding like you'll expect them to is very interesting but it wasn't really that needed for this book so I didn't give it much importance or more accurately it didn't hinder my enjoyment like what I mentioned earlier. Learning more about the resistance wouldn't have hurt either.

On the other hand I really enjoyed Bartimaeus's character; he's funny, he's sarcastic and he's got this way of dealing with things that just makes it an all around fun. Nathaniel isn't too shabby either, I really enjoyed the realistic depiction of his actions, he's childish and impatient even though he wants to show you that he's great which is just what I expect from a kid his age who's been raised to think he's better than the majority of the world. Yes, the kid can do magic but all I'm really talking about here is his personality and the way he thought of dealing with the incident. I really appreciated that, watching this duo go on and about in their adventure was also really fun.

Once the whole conspiracy and danger surrounding these magicians started showing in full view with some very felt consequences it was this high speed action that went from bad to worse to I don't know what else Stroud is going to put them through but either way it was fun to read about, especially the dialogue. Jonathan Stroud has a really nice way with words sometimes and it shows just how colourful these Djinn can be as well. There are still a lot of things I want to know about, particularly the resistance and their abilities considering they're "humans" but I'm sure the remaining books has information on that. Not sure when I'll be reading them but I'm interested regardless.

Final rating: 3/5