Ptolemy’s Gate by Jonathan Stroud and a Meme

Ptolemy’s Gate is the last in the Bartimaeus Trilogy. Picture London, somewhere in time, with a lot of magicians running around telling everyone else what to do without regard to anyone but themselves and you have the setting for this book.

Nathaniel, the young magician the trilogy follows, has now been promoted within the ministry and is well on his way to making his career. Yet he is becoming frustrated with politics and the way things are run. He has begun to tire of the back-biting world of politics where appearance is everything and careers are made and broken on connections and power. He also still has that niggling guilt about a certain girl who died saving his life. Normally this shouldn’t bother Nathaniel as she was only a commoner, but somehow he cannot quite quash the feeling that it wasn’t right.

Once again, life won’t be simple for Nathaniel. There are those still plotting the overthrow of the government and the end of the magician’s rule. The greatest difficulty is that it’s still not quite clear who these people are. The government is blaming commoner insurgents for all of the trouble, but cannot explain the odd use of magic involved in many of the attacks. Nathaniel becomes embroiled in plots and counter plots while trying to save both his career and his life.

Ptolemy’s Gate is every bit as exciting as the first two, with large dollops of Bartimaeus’ sarkiness thrown in for extra entertainment value. There are all the moral and physical conflicts you could wish for in a book. All in all a very good read.

Bone of contention you ask? Why yes, I do have one. The ending. I won’t tell you how it ends, but I wasn’t a happy bunny. I wanted a different one. I wanted, I wanted, well, I wanted something else. OK, OK, it was a good ending, it just wasn’t what I wanted. Wasn’t there a book somewhere about someone who kidnapped an author and made them rewrite the ending of one of their books? Think that would be an option? No? Oh, alright then. I’ll just content myself with what Stroud plunked down. Sheesh! You’d have thought he would have asked me first. Honestly! ;P

Another 5/5 for being a great kids story which adults will like too.

BBAW MEME - Taken from several bloggers

Do you snack while you read? Unfortunately yes. It’s a really bad habit and not one I would encourage others to indulge in, especially not if there are Jelly Bellies in the vicinity.

Do you tend to mark your books as you read, or does the idea ofwriting in books horrify you? I used to write in all of my books at uni, but now it seems like sacrilege. I stick to post its if I need notes.

How do you keep your place while reading a book? Bookmark? Dog-ears?Laying the book flat open? Bookmarks or I note the page and try to remember it.
Fiction, Non-fiction, or both? Fiction. I get enough of reality as it is.

Are you a person who tends to read to the end of chapters, or are youable to put a book down at any point? I do prefer to read to the end of the chapter, but I will put it down earlier if necessary.

If you come across an unfamiliar word, do you stop to look it up right away? Not unless I can’t understand the meaning from the context.

What are you currently reading? Audio Book: Jamaica Inn by Daphne du Maurier, Paper Book: The White Dragon by Anne McCaffrey

What is the last book you bought? Syren by Angie Sage

Are you the type of person that only reads one book at a time or can you read more than one at a time? Usually only one paper and one audio at a time.

Do you have a favorite time of day and/or place to read? Not really. I do love to read on my couch on Sunday mornings though. During the week I’m limited to a few minutes before I go to bed.

Do you prefer series books or stand alone books? I’m rather partial to series. I always want more of what I really like.

The Golem’s Eye by Jonathan Stroud

This is the second book in the Bartimaeus Trilogy. The young magician John Mandrake, aka Nathaniel, has grown up a bit since his first adventure with the demon Bartimaeus. He has since moved in with a more competent magician and has risen in status and power. He’s well on his way to a successful career in the ministry. That is until the Resistance starts wreaking havoc in London and Nathaniel is forced to call up Bartimaeus to help him solve his latest problems.

Stroud does something a little unexpected with his characters in these books. You start reading them thinking that it will be the same as per usual, as in the kind of thing we all like. You’re expecting the underdog little magician to become your favourite character and you want to root for him the whole way. With Nate, you really just wind up feeling a bit like he’s an old friend who’s gone really wrong and you either want to save him, or, if that’s not possible, distance yourself from him as fast as possible. His new role in the ministry, his obvious talent and his fame have all gone to his head. He’s become pure ambition and all thoughts of altruism or morality have basically left him. Time and time again you hope he’ll do the Right thing, but he disappoints every time. You slowly start to feel like he’s a sticky bit of candy you’ve got stuck to your shoe and would dearly like to get rid of.

On the other hand, Stroud re-introduces the minor characters of Kitty, Stanley and Fred in this novel and delves into the Resistance. He shows the flip side to the wizards rule and you wind up rooting for the “enemy”. This reinforces the hope that Nate will finally get a grip on himself and realize how wrong the world has gone and do something about it.

Stuck between these two worlds is Bartimaeus. He, too, would like to like Nate and has hopes for him, but his sympathies, when he can scrape himself together enough to think about having sympathies for anyone but himself, are with Kitty and the Resistance. Still, Nathaniel manages to force him into another bargain and he must hold to his end of the deal.

I really liked this book. Again, yes, it’s a children’s book, but I think it looks at things from a fresher angle and I’m interested to see where Stroud goes with it. I’m still holding out hope for Nate, although less and less as time goes on. Still, nothing has been decided and there’s still time. Plus, Bartimaeus and his sarcasm are just really good, plus Kitty turns out to be a very likeable character.

This one gets a 5 out of 5 for me. What makes it a 5 and not a 4? I think what really kicks it up there for me is not only that it’s a good story with lots of action, excitement and interesting themes, but Stroud didn’t dumb down the vocabulary just because it’s aimed at children and young teens. I want to high five him for that alone. The best way for kids to learn is when they’re having fun and we could use more of that and not less. Go Stroud.

The Amulet of Samarkand by Jonathan Stroud

The Amulet of Samarkand is the first book in the Bartimaeous Trilogy. It's a children's/early teens book, but was really imaginative and a lot of fun. I just finished it and loved it. It's one of those books I would classify as the candy of reading. OK, maybe the fruit of reading. Candy isn't good for you, but reading always is, no matter how fun and quick a read.

The main character is Nathaniel, a young boy who was given up to the magicians at the age of 6 to become a magician's apprentice. Unfortunately for Nathaniel, his new master is at best a mediocre wizard and isn't really very keen on taking him on. Arthur Underwood would much prefer to live a quiet life and concentrate on climbing the ministry ladder than to bring up someone else's child and to teach him magic. Nathaniel, feeling cheated, neglected and alone, finally decides to take his education into his own hands, which ultimately leads him on a hectic and dangerous chase around London when his plans backfire on him.

The London Nathaniel lives in is not like the London we all know, or a Muggle London, if you will. It's something like a parallel world, like the England Lara of Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials. Some things are the same, but not all. The first major difference is that magic is an integral part of life in Nathaniel's London, where the Magicians are the aristocracy of society. They hold most powerful positions in the ministry and the look down on commoners as, well, common. The reasoning is that magicians are powerful, they protect the people from foreign magicians and they are better educated than the commoners, therefore they are better. Nathaniel is learning to be just like them as he grows up in this world, only there are still notable differences in his attitude. He still has a sense of honour and decency that the older magicians seem to have lost completely. However, he has still lived in that world all his life and knows he must play by it's rules to save his own skin.

The books starts off with Nathaniel, age 12, summoning up a djinn, Bartimaeous, to help him with his plans of revenge against a magician who humiliated him. Bartimaeous provides a lot of comic relief in the book. He's sarcastic, scornful, haughty, and although he portrays himself as being rather on the evil side, he's soft-hearted all the same. He's not pleased at being summoned up to serve a magician, and least of all a magician of such tender years. However, Nathaniel proves himself to be more knowledgeable than anyone would have thought and the two become bound together for better or for worse, literally. The only thing they can do in the end is help each other, or perish trying. This leads them running across London and Southern England trying to halt an evil plot which Nathaniel's original plan unwittingly uncovered.

Like I said, I was tempted to call this book reading candy because it was so fun and exciting, however, on reflection, there really is a lot of food for thought in it. First of all there's the whole subject of social superiority, which is blatant and rampant in Nathaniel's world. Usually in books of this type, there would be one person of exceptional moral standing guiding the young hero down the right path, but here, there just is no such person. All magicians are for themselves. There is no greater good or right path except the Machiavellian one. So basically Nathaniel's development into a hopefully morally upstanding person is left up to himself and his innate sense of right and wrong. Also, as magicians look upon djinns, imps and all creatures from "the other world" as their own personal slaves to be summoned up and bound at will, there is point of slavery. Will Nathaniel grow up thinking this is fine as it is or will he ultimately try and change it? The first book leaves these questions open and it will be interesting to see how he turns out. Finally, Stroud didn't dumb down the vocabulary for children, which impressed me. All in all, I think kids could learn a lot from this book while having fun at the same time. I know I'd recommend it to anyone with kids between the ages of 11 up.

For it's outstanding merits all around, this one gets a clear 5 out of 5 rating.