The Amulet Of Samarkand

If I had to pick one fantasy series that both adults and children will absolutely love to pieces, Jonathan Stroud's Bartimaeus series is it. It delighted me to no end!A quick synopsis of book 1: a very young, magically gifted boy named Nathaniel has been forfeited by his parents to the magician's adoption service in exchange for money and he goes to live with and be the apprentice to Arthur Underwood, a mediocre magician and Minister of Internal Affairs of the British government, who turns out to be a very strict, uncaring, cowardly master. Mr. Underwood's wife, Martha, welcomes young Nathaniel with open arms and cares for him greatly, and the feeling is mutual. Little does Mr. Underwood know of the true talent of his young apprentice, and while Nathaniel is barely being taught anything at all by his pompous old master, the brave young boy is devouring the books and learning much on his own.One day, a group of Mr. Underwood's friends, all powerful magicians and fellow employees of the government, are having a little get-together and Arthur decides to present his young apprentice, "the boy", to everyone. Simon Lovelace, one of the most powerful and arrogant magicians in the group, decides to question the boy about what he has learned, and although Nathaniel obviously displays much natural talent and knowledge of magic (much to his master's and everyone's surprise), Simon Lovelace completely dismisses the boy's talent and tries to make him look like an ignorant little buffoon. Completely angered and embarrassed now, Nathaniel talks back to the powerful magician and in return, he angers Mr. Lovelace so much that the magician does something awful to the boy to humiliate him in front of everyone present. Afterwards, Nathaniel runs up to his room crying and immediately plots his revenge on the evil magician. And this is where everything gets REALLY exciting.Nathaniel spies on and learns some devious details about Lovelace. Then he furiously reads all the books on magic he can get his hands on, and when he thinks he's ready, he secretly summons up the dangerous spirit Bartimaeus to do help him do his bidding. But Bartimaeus is much more than Nathaniel thinks he his and very difficult to control. And young Nathaniel is far more than what Bartimaeus is expecting, too. Together, these two embark on a hilarious, exciting, and very dangerous adventure while trying to bring about the ultimate downfall of the great magician Simon Lovelace.The chemistry between the outspoken, determined little boy and the endlessly sarcastic Bartimaeus makes for some of the most fun, enjoyable reading I've done in a very long time. The writing is so clever, witty, and devious that it had me laughing all the way through the book, and it's definitely humor that would appeal to all ages. Very highly recommend to everyone. This is a must-read!* Update 12/13/2014 - Just finished a back-to-back reading marathon of all four Bartimaeus books (The Amulet of Samarkand, The Golem's Eye, Ptolemy's Gate, and The Ring of Solomon). If you love the first book as much as I did, you will be unable to resist reading them all. Every single book in this series is just as wonderful, hilarious, and engaging as the others. 5 BIG STARS to all four books and crossing my fingers that one of these days I'll get to go on another wild adventure with my favorite naughty spirit, Bartimaeus. LOVE, LOVE, LOVE!

The book is fun. Not the best I have read in Fantasy, but quite good nonetheless. The apprentice magician who is better than his teacher (and a very pretentious one) and start summoning dangerous jinnies when he is just 12, is not something common. Bartimeus is a very funny entity, all bent on mischief who must obey the kid’s orders, thus stealing the amulet of Samarkand, a very precious amulet from Simon Lovelace, a very powerful magician. What ensues is a funny romp in an alternate London, in a world ruled by magicians. Honestly there are similar books (Ester Friesner, at the beginning looks similar, Majik series, or Craig Shaw Gardner in his Ebenezum series, or Asprin in his Myth series, or Simon Green, etc.) so, a good book, to while the time away, in a good way.I gave it only 3 stars because the typos in the kindle edition are terrible, split words, page numbers, wrong words, you can find them all. Cannot understand why the book is not reviewed, it is obviously a botched scan.

This is the story of Nathaniel, a young and ambitious magician in training, whose master is mediocre at best and loathes Nathaniel.Because Nathaniel is impatient and too smart for his own good, he decides to take his training further, without his master's knowledge, and summons Bartimaeus, a djinni from the "Other Place" and that's when the trouble starts.This is Harry Potter meets Aahz (for those of you familiar with the M.Y.T.H series by Robert Asprin and well, Harry Potter). It sounds like a déjà vu, been-there-read-that kind of story but Stroud came up with a well crafted work that brings a bit of novelty to the genre.Bartimaeus (or Barty, as I like to call him) is absolutely hilarious. His chapters are written in the first person and he is not sparing with his opinions. He's been around for 5000 years and he's pretty full of himself.My only complaint is the author's excessive use of footnotes in the Barty chapters. Although most of them are hilarious and worth reading, I feel a lot of them could have easily been incorporated in the text itself, instead of having the reader going back and forth to read them. Especially since I read it on Kindle and it took me a while to get the hang of reading the footnotes and coming back to the text afterwards. But my own dorkiness is hardly the author's fault.So now, as is always the risk when reading the first book of a series (that I got as a freebie on Amazon), I find myself hooked and in a bit of Barty humor withdrawal syndrome. Guess I'm going to have to shell out the 7$ to get the second book, which I will do gladly :)

I ordered about 20 books recently and out of the 5 Ive gone through so far, this one is prob my favorite, which was a suprise to me. It was a fun and fast read, and I preferred it over some of the other more well received and reviewed books Ive dove into in recent times.Everyone will compare young adult fantasy books to a certain kid with a lightning bolt on his forehead and out of all the books Ive read, this one prob comes the closest to Rowlings writting in style and feel.FYI, some of my favorites books are Frankenstein, Moby Dick, Animal Farm and my favorite author is HP Lovecraft.

This is a wonderful escape from reality and sarcastic take on the world of government. It aptly pokes fun of societal structure, wealth, and clamoring for power and wealth. Nathaniel, despite his youth, human flaws, and inexperience, triumphs over evil, even though he harbors some of the same character flaws.His djinn, Bartimeaus, is cleaver, arrogant and vain, despite the protestation to the contrary. It is well worth the read