The Amulet of Samarkand

In the alternate world of The Amulet of Samarkand, powerful magicians rule Britain, and its empire. Ordinary children are ‘sold’ to magicians in the name of patriotism. Nathaniel is one such boy magician-in-training, sold to the government by his birth parents at the age of five and sent to live as an apprentice to a master. Nathaniel’s master, Arthur Underwood, is a cold, condescending, and cruel middle-ranking magician in the Ministry of Internal Affairs. However, Nathaniel gets along tolerably well over the years in the Underwood household until the summer before his eleventh birthday. Everything changes when he is publicly humiliated by the ruthless magician Simon Lovelace and betrayed by his cowardly master who does not defend him.

The story picks up pace from there on, when Nathaniel, in a fit of rage & revenge on his mind, voraciously devours magical texts & scrolls to face Simon Lovelace when the time comes. When he musters the strength to summon the 5,000-year-old djinni Bartimaeus, he sets out to avenge Lovelace by stealing the powerful Amulet of Samarkand. By doing so, the boy magician plunges into a situation more dangerous and deadly than anything he could ever imagine.

The djinni Bartimaeus is absolutely hilarious, with a wit that snaps, crackles, and pops. His dryly sarcastic, irreverent asides spill out into copious footnotes that no one in his or her right mind would skip over.

In The Amulet of Samarkand, the first of The Bartimaeus Trilogy, the story switches back and forth from Bartimaeus’ first-person point of view to a third-person narrative about Nathaniel which in itself creates an interesting contrast about the view points of both Nathaniel and his djinni, Bartimaeus.

Though the plot itself isn’t entirely unpredictable as the gears get into motion, it’s a testament to Stroud’s skill as a writer that one is never truly sure of precisely how the events will unfold as the pieces of the story gradually fall into place. A special feature of this trilogy as compared to others of their genre is that Stroud upends the stereotypes of the “good magician” and the “bad demon”. His informative and sometimes humorous side appears in footnotes, an unusual device in fiction, but one that serves a useful purpose here. Stroud creates a convincingly detailed secondary world with echoes of actual history and folklore.

The story is one of many fantasy fiction novels being churned out today. But, it is original & creative enough to stand its ground against its more illustrious compatriots, namely, Harry Potter & the Lord of the Rings Trilogy. I’ll give you a week’s time to read this book before I review the second and third installments of this trilogy.

Until then, Happy Reading!