Underwood, a motherly woman who is his sole source of tenderness or kindness. Underwood, a peevish and unpleasant low-level bureaucrat of a magician who works for the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Nathaniel, who was sold by his parents to the government when he was five, has been apprenticed since then to Mr. In the very first chapter, Bartimaeus is less than pleased to be summoned into the middle of a pentacle by a scrawny kid, shaking like a leaf, who pipes, "By the constraints of the circle, the points on the pentacle, and the chain of runes, I am your master! You will obey my will!" Nathaniel commands him to bring back the Amulet of Samarkand, an ancient artifact now reposing in the house of Simon Lovelace, a powerful and vengeful magician politician, and the djinni has no choice but to bow to the boy's foolish command. The viewpoint alternates between the overblown, self-possessed, wisecracking and sometimes put-upon narrative of a 5,000-year-old djinni, Bartimaeus, and an omniscient narrator who follows Nathaniel, a twelve-year-old boy-magician-in-training. Here's the first of The Bartimaeus Trilogy, a crackling and original English fantasy that takes place in an alternate London.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |