The Amulet of Samarkand (The Bartimaeus Sequence)

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The story begins with a young but gifted apprentice magician summoning a djinni (genie), Bartimaeus. At the Tower, Bartimaeus is unsuccessfully interrogated by Pinn and Jessica Whitwell, Minister of Security. The boy, Nathaniel, whines all the time about things not going his way, and only thinks to plot revenge on people who've wronged him. See what other audio books made our Road Trip playlist and what we thought of them on Badass Book Reviews. Underwood and neglects the less admirable experiences, Nathaniel becomes the quiet hero of the government.

I know they were trying to keep it to one book, but I feel like too much was left out, too much was rushed. The graphic novel obviously leaves out a lot of internal dialogue and scene description, but it was a nice quick review of the plot of the first book, and the adapters did a good job of keeping some of the snarky footnotes that made Bartimaeus stand out in my memory.Told from the very different viewpoints of Bartimaeus ( a smart-aleck djinn who has lived thousands of years and has nothing to show for it but an I rock you don't attitude) and Nathaniel (12 year old jerkwad apprentice whose lifelong dream is to be a huge im portant government official and have millions of obedient djinn slaves at his fingertips. The secrets of how to make the amulet were lost to time, although Bartimaeus mentions that it must have been a hard task to imprison the being(s) inside. I have been on kind of a graphic novel kick lately, and one of my pulls has been comparing art choice and theme in graphic novel adaptations of familiar books. A young magician's apprentice, Nathaniel, secretly summons the irascible 5000-year-old djinni, Bartimaeus, to do his bidding. 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.

We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others. The graphic novel adaptation of the first volume in the best-selling Bartimaeus sequence makes the series more accessible to readers without taking away any of the wit and magic. Normally I don't go in for pseudo sci-fi or fantasy that includes that 4th wall breaker: the sarcastic narrator with a modern sensibility and a "sassy" tongue, but this one works. Not surprisingly, this very intelligent boy can’t stand him but he likes his wife, whom he sees as a substitute mother of sort. The Amulet was originally made by an Asian shaman, three thousand years ago, and was given to a local princess as a gift.For those looking for a book in a similar vein to the Harry Potter series, this story of a young apprentice magician is a must read. Interestingly, my memory of the series is that it did a fantastic job of world building and immersing me in an alternate London.

Personally i did enjoy the changes in perspective and viewpoints - it was one of the only things that kept me interested. Many of Nathaniel’s scenes are flashbacks, and make you feel badly for him, even as he’s learning to become just as awful as every other magician. He's a whiny know-it-all who's only really interesting for a possessive crush he has on his art teacher. It probably isn’t a format I will do back to often but it had made me more open to trying other stories told in this format.

Well, the Bartimaeus trilogy by Jonathan Stroud is a book that fits completely into the great books written for children. not my faveourite art style, the footnotes were just too much info which was most of the times already obvious from the pictures . Much more than a mere Harry Potter wannabe knock-off, The Amulet of Samarkand treats us not only to a blazing quick page turner but also throws in a generous helping of more adult issues such as questioning the morality of class distinctions; the development of a resistance movement to a dictatorial government clearly interested in nothing more than the perpetuation of its own comfort and rule; and power lust, greed or altruism as motives for action.