#rereading the amulet of samarkand

[crickwater]

bartimaeus trilogy is possibly the best ya fantasy series of all time

[lejay-the-impossible]

Just saw your Amulet of Samarkand animatic you posted like a year ago and it's really cool! I love those books so much!

It's funny my Amulet of Samarkand animatic started getting so much recognition NOW of all times, because I JUST finished rereading the first book.

THANK YOU A LOT AND HERE'S A DOODLE FOR YOU NICE STRANGER

I really plan to draw more Bartimaeus art soon, these books are my personal treasure

Also PLEASE follow me on YouTube where I MIGHT be posting more animation related stuff:3

[ganondoodle]

are you talking about the Bartimaeus triology i.e. the Bartimaeus sequence first book named the amulet of samarkand of a young magician summoning a djinni to steal an amulet? because if so like. I remember reading that book Ages ago and it sticks Clearly in my mind

yeah! the bartimäus books (the german translation that is) are probably the ones i have reread the most despite their length and really not liking nathanael (the magician) xD

i mostly reread the first and fourth one bc the second and especially the third got a a little grating with all the disaster after bigger disaster

i dont even know at what readers they were aimed or not bc i got all three from my older sister (only bought the prequel one myself .. which is the one that i lost/was stolen .. i still have the paper cover that was around it bc i always left it at home when taking the book somewhere out of fear of damaging it .. :( it was the last day of school before the winter freetime and i left it in the classroom to help others clean stuff up elsewhere and when i returned it was gone :( )

the setting was really intriguing to me and i like the way it was written, especially when it was just Bartimäus xD

[july-19th-club]

BOOK LIST 2024

TOTAL READ: 38 which is far less than last year but last year the bulk of the number was composed of Animorphs books and this year I read all three Baru Cormorant books which are monster doorstoppers so I feel the actual volume is probably about the same

as usual the books are listed with the time it took me to read them; if there's a gap of several months then I was probably reading a stack in rotation. i have ten on the hopper right now that i read a chapter at a time and then put it at the back of the stack. this is the only way to read. book ask game forthcoming i love to play book ask game

Uzumaki – Junji Ito (Dec 23 – Jan 24)

Laws of the Skies – Grégoire Courtois (Dec 23 – Jan 24)

The Traitor Baru Cormorant/#1 – Seth Dickinson (Mar – Apr)

The Monster Baru Cormorant/#2 – Seth Dickinson (Apr – July)

The Tyrant Baru Cormorant/#3 – Seth Dickinson (July – Sept)

The Fifth Season/#1 – N. K. Jemison (June (reread))

The Obelisk Gate/#2 – N. K. Jemison (June – Aug)

The Stone Sky/#3 – N. K. Jemison (Aug)

Cultish – Amanda Montell (Nov – Dec)

The Hobbit – J.R.R. Tolkien (Sept – Nov)

The Lottery & Other Stories – Shirley Jackson (Feb)

The Amulet of Samarkand/#1 – Jonathan Stroud (Dec 23 – June 24 (reread))

The Golem’s Eye/#2 – Jonathan Stroud (Aug – Oct (reread))

The Ring of Solomon – Jonathan Stroud (June – July)

The Library at Mount Char – Scott Hawkins (Mar – April)

“In Salt-Sea Tears” – Seanan McGuire (March)

Disappearance at Devil’s Rock – Paul Tremblay (Feb)

The Actual Star – Monica Byrne (Oct – Dec)

Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke – Eric LaRocca (July)

Our Kindred Home – Alyson Morgan (Dec 23 – Jan 24)

Held By the Land – Leigh Joseph (Dec 23 – Jan 24)

Mister Magic – Kiersten White (Oct 23 – Jan 24)

Home Cooking – Laurie Colwin (Oct 23 – May 24)

The People in the Trees – Hanya Yanagihara (March)

The Mysterious Case of the Alperton Angels – Janice Hallett (Oct)

“The Corn Maiden” – Joyce Carol Oates (Feb)

The Exvangelicals – Sarah McCammon (Oct)

Dark Fire/#2 – C. J. Sansom (May – June)

Sovereign/#3 – C. J. Sansom (June – Sept)

Piranesi – Susannah Clarke (June – Aug (reread))

Flying Solo – Ralph Fletcher (June (reread))

“Mistletoe Murder” – P.D. James (Aug (reread))

Chasing Vermeer/#1 – Blue Balliet (Sept (reread))

The Silent Companions – Laura Purcell (Sept – Nov)

A Barrel of Laughs, A Vale of Tears – Jules Feiffer (Sept – Nov)

“Oh, Whistle, and I’ll Come to You, My Lad” – M. R. James (Oct)

I’ll Be Gone in the Dark – Michelle McNamera (Nov)

[e-b-reads]

Books of the month: March + April 2023

Failed to do any post like this for March, so now I am catching up all at once! For new followers/those who do not know, I am both a part-time PhD student and work at a summer camp (which is a retreat center in the off-season, but summer is the really busy time of year). Anyway, between the end of the semester and getting prepped for camp, the busy season has started earlier for me than usual. Doesn't mean I'm not reading! Just means I'm posting less about it. Here's books I read in March and April that I would recommend:

The Amulet of Samarkand (Jonathan Stroud): Had one of those impulses to use inter-library loan and reread a series I last read sometime in middle or high school. This time it's the Bartimaeus triology. (I also reread The Golem's Eye in the past two months; waiting on the third.) Anyway, I remember the books as engaging and funny, which they are; this time around I'm spending more time thinking about all the political and ethical questions raised by this fantasy society that's like our world except magicians rule everything. (i.e. I'm spending more time admiring Stroud's worldbuilding.) A series worth reading/rereading!

The Best American Mystery Stories 2020 (C.J. Box, Ed.): These were fun and fascinating, sometimes at the same time and sometimes by turns. When busy, it can be nice to have some short stories to dip into, and I always like mysteries. I especially spent time considering what exactly makes a "mystery" - some of these are more whodunnits (occasionally with a twist), others are mysterious but the reader knows what happened, others have crime and/or action but no one's solving anything. All good in different ways!

A Free Man of Color or One Extra Corpse (Barbara Hambly): Right, so I have already written about my love of the Benjamin January mystery series at least in passing. A Free Man of Color is the first in that series: 1830s New Orleans, very focused on the slave/free colored (the term at the time) community, murder mystery. I keep hesitating to recommend the series outright because it is 19 books long and, at this point, full of my blorbos, so I'm not sure I'm totally objective about it. However! One Extra Corpse is the second in a new historical murder mystery series by the same author, this one set in inter-war Hollywood but with a transplanted English protagonist. Reading this one, full of likeable characters but not the ones I feel unreasonably affectionate about, I realized: actually, I do think that Hambly's attention to historical detail, flawed but human characters, sense of humor, detail-driven mystery plots, etc., make for good books. So I do recommend either of these mystery series to anyone who likes that kind of thing! They are not flawless, but they are lots of fun.

[alvallah]

35 and 48 :)

35. What's a book you read over and over?

I have read the Amulet of Samarkand a million times over and then fail to reread the rest of the trilogy half the time I do, despite it being amazing lol. It's a YA fantasy set in a world adjacent to ours but with a powerful minority able to summon spirits (demons). The series has colorful characters with a couple meaningful arcs and is half-written in a darkly humorous tone through the lens of one of the characters (the other half being narrated by an omniscient voice). The books center on the issue of class-struggle (slave vs. master, wealthy vs. poor, access to education vs. the lack of it) and the ensuing war that brings these disparities to light.

48. What book would you give someone if they wanted a glimpse into your psyche?

This is a hard choice because most of the books I've been reading lately are more my pursuit to learn about others rather than reflecting on myself? I think I would choose The Giver or The Little Prince though, even though I haven't read them in a while. It's this idea of craving romance, life and discovery, and choking on expectation of uniformity and the looming suggestion of a future already written (by both the powers that be or by the whispers in my head), and trying to resist that by keeping an open mind to adventure and knowledge, and also learning to accept the risk of loss and pain so that I may actually live. Especially as someone who had suffered mental illness a long while and now has to face the struggles of adulthood, teaching myself to keep a kind of wide-eyed and accepting sort of approach to life has turned me around for the better I think.

Book asks

[slipperymeteor]

The Outlaws Scarlett and Browne - Jonathan Stroud

I read this after rereading Lockwood and Co. and The Amulet of Samarkand, thinking l'm gonna check out Stroud's new book.

It feels different: unlike in the Bartimaeus trilogy where magicians rely on daemons from the Other Place, or Lockwood where children have perception talents to fight ghosts (which come from an Other Place too), here powers seem to be innate to some individuals in a way that marks the individuals a la X-Men or The Chrysalids. The Chrysalids might be the closest thing I've read prior to this and really I read that because Noah Reid narrated it.

Anyway, Chrysalids: some individuals are born "deviant" from the standard, and in Browne's case he became a subject of experimentation. He can move objects with his thoughts, read other people's thoughts (reminiscent of the telepathy in Chrysalids), and in distress his body is taken over by The Fear (as yet unspecified). There's also a strong use of religiosity, Scarlett seems to do a blend of Buddhism and Islam with her semi-regular prayer on a prayer mat (which she has used at some point to clobber another person). While Chrysalids is very agricultural, this is a Wild West western, set in a post-apocalyptic London: the City submerged in the Thames and new kingdoms arose in the British island (Chrysalids were... Canada?). I don't know if the lack of humor here compared to Lockwood or Bartimaeus is due to the setting being more bleak than alt-London or else, but in this way this makes it feel different than the two series.

[scienceismygirlfriend]

Book asks: 4 and 17!

4. Did you discover any new authors that you love this year?

i had never read anthony berkeley until very recently (like within the past month!) and i have found i enjoy roger sheringham! funnier than i expected. also shout out to kate atkinson whose jackson brodie books are so well-written but they made my head and heart hurt a bit so i gotta consume them in small doses

17. Did any books surprise you with how good they were?

so i already knew i loved The Amulet of Samarkand (Jonathan Stroud) because i read it over and over as a teen but i realized i hadn't actually finished the series so i reread the first two books and when i finally read Ptolemy's Gate i was like. damn ok jonathan bringing class commentary into a middle grade series. get 'em young

[daughterofhecata]

Brain: I wanna reread Bartimaeus.

Me: dude we're already in the middle of another book. maybe pick something that doesn't have 500+ pages?

Me: *goes through my book shelf looking for something shorter to reread*

Brain: I wanna reread Bartimaeus specifically tho.

Me: ...okay, we'll start rereading Bartimaeus.

[iampresent]

Anyways shoutout to my 6th grade science teacher for having The Amulet of Samarkand on a mini-bookshelf in the corner of her classroom, you really helped me discover an amazing series, no I am not here to give it back.

[theburiedgay-moved]

“Nathaniel Studies”, pencil on paper, 2020

I tried to create some portraits of what I imagine Nathaniel looked like in books 1, 2, and 3 respectively. The stock images I referenced are below.

[chronomally]

I'm yelling that's exactly how I've been thinking of him as well like Artemis gets better (eventually) but Nathaniel just gets worse

[bigcats-birds-and-books]

||JOMP Book Photo Challenge: September|| 8. Worst Book in a Series You Liked. I love Bartimaeus, truly I do. I wasn’t super fond of The Ring of Solomon, though, and I’m not sure why.

[mindfulwrath]

Books of 2022

Not including DNFs.

“The Authentic William James” by Stephen Gallagher - a British show cowboy is accused of setting a theater fire that killed a German noble. Sebastian Becker, special investigator for the British Crown, must find the accused so he can be scapegoated before rumors of assassination spark a pan-European war. Along the way, Sebastian finds that the accused man’s daughter has been kidnapped by another, rather more authentic stage cowboy. This book has an awful lot, folks: murder, Theatre, cowboys, turn-of-the-century Hollywood, labor rights, addiction, insane asylums, and more! Fans of “Murder with the Devil and Friends” will probably enjoy this one (I did). Recommended.

“The Amulet of Samarkand” by Jonathan Stroud (reread) - A young magician in the heart of the British Empire summons a djinni to steal an artifact from the man who humiliated him, and fucks it up worse than any other protagonist I’ve ever read. The story is half told from his perspective, and half told from the perspective of the snarky, self-aggrandizing djinni whom he has enslaved to carry out the theft. Mr. Stroud did not pull his punches with this one, I tell you what. Still, it works infinitely better as part of a trilogy than on its own, maybe more than any other Book One I’ve read. Recommended.

“The Golem’s Eye” by Jonathan Stroud (reread) - MR. STROUD DID NOT PULL HIS PUNCHES WITH THIS ONE, I TELL YOU WHAT. Our young magician from the last book continues fucking things up, but this time while the djinni ruthlessly roasts him for his fashion sense while the two of them try to get to the bottom of a series of mysterious break-ins. We also get to spend some time with our third protagonist, a young woman who has a resilience to magic and is part of a small Resistance, whose goal is to break the stranglehold the magicians have on the government. Boy, if you thought Book 1 was scathingly critical of empires and those who run them, Book 2 doubles down on it hard. Chillingly relevant, despite being written in 2004. Stroud also does a great job writing a protagonist who exhibits the very real disease of being 14. Recommended. (Bonus points for correctly attributing golems to Jewish tradition!)

“Ptolemy’s Gate” by Jonathan Stroud (reread) - MR. STROUD DID NOT COME TO FUCK AROUND, GODDAMN. The thrilling conclusion to the Bartimaeus trilogy, and it really delivers on every front. No setup goes without payoff. Honestly, it feels like these 3 books are really just one very long book, because details from Book 1 and Book 2 come back with real significance, little fanfare, and a hell of a lot of momentum. I really fucking love this series, and this book drives home why. Recommended.

“How to be an Antiracist” by Ibram X. Kendi - Dr. Kendi defines racism, antiracism, and many related terms and intersections, goes through the origins and history of racism as well as his own journey from being raised in a racist world to choosing to be antiracist. A greatly clarifying and galvanizing read, at least for me. Dense at times, but well worth slowing down for. Recommended.

“Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation: Vol 2” by MXTX - Things get much worse but also much gayer for our fast-talking protagonist - although really the vast majority of this book is about side-stories that happened many years in the past. The side-stories are really good though, and add to the narrative tension rather than distracting from it. I really do think this series (and probably all MXTX novels) could be used as a masterclass in non-linear storytelling. Recommended.

“Kingdom Hearts: Final Mix” (vol. 1) by Shiro Amano - An abridged version of the story of KH1 told in graphic novel format: kid’s world is swallowed by darkness, he gets separated from his two friends, he somehow acquires a magic key-sword that lets him fight the creatures of darkness, he goes on a quest to find his friends and ends up saving a bunch of Disney worlds along the way. It’s got some interesting little tidbits and alternate translations (and very, very cute art), so I certainly enjoyed it. Recommended if you’re already a KH fan or if you want to get the basic story without playing several hundred hours of games or watching a few dozen hours of cutscenes.

“Heaven Official’s Blessing: Vol 2” by MXTX - The plot thickens and things get worse for the protagonist (and isn't that just a summary of all MXTX novels?). I had some trouble with keeping all the names straight in this one because everyone has three names and it's a little trickier when I don't have a face to pin them all to, but it's still a good read. You can feel the plot putting on weight like a teenager getting ready for a growth spurt. Plus there's a really fun scene in a gambling den that is simultaneously the most chaste and the dirtiest thing I've ever read in published fiction. Recommended.

“Dracula” by Bram Stoker (reread, via Dracula Daily) - A fresh methodology on the old classic. I'd forgotten some of the twists and turns since I read this book back in high school, and the "daily" format is something I'd long wanted to engage in (i.e., reading a book that has a set timeline according to that timeline). The community of memes and analyses was a great joy to partake in, too. Recommended, particularly via Dracula Daily (there's always next year!)

"Dreadnought" by April Daniels - A teenage trans girl inherits a superhero mantle that not only gives her superpowers, but the body she's always wanted. This causes a tremendous amount of problems and immediately flings her into a mire of political turmoil while having to navigate high school and an abusive father. This is a book that knows its stuff back to front and remixes it adeptly. Recommended, but with trigger warnings for abuse, transphobia, and some fairly disturbing gore (and that's coming from me).

"Heaven Official's Blessing: Vol 3" by MXTX - The plot thickens, and things get worse for the protagonist. No, I mean really, REALLY worse. But there's also a damn good kiss in there, and plenty of other fun stuff to keep it from being oppressively grim. Recommended.

"Ancillary Justice" by Ann Leckie - A fragment of a ship's AI, confined to a human body, seeks revenge for the murder of her favorite lieutenant. Unfortunately, the person she's seeking vengeance against happens to be the emperor of a massive, millennia-old space empire, whose consciousness occupies a thousand bodies. A sedately paced, intricately built story about love and imperialism and culture and war and music. If you like Robots With Feelings, complex political dramas, or conlangs, this book is for you. Recommended.

"Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation: Vol 3" by MXTX - This one is primarily flashback, although not all the same flashback (have I mentioned the whole "masterclass in nonlinear storytelling" thing yet?) and stitched together in a way that flows naturally and keeps you reading to the very end. Also, a damn good kiss in there (vol 3 seems to be the magic number for that). But also also, some really fucking horrifying gore, to the point that I went: "who looked at this and decided they could make a show that got past the censors?" I mean, they were right, whoever they were, they managed it and "The Untamed" kicked ass, but I have to wonder what kind of person rolled up their sleeves to do it. Recommended.

"The Long Earth" by Stephen Baxter and Terry Pratchett - The course of human history is forever changed when a rogue scientist releases the designs for a device that allows people to step to parallel Earths, all of which seem to be uninhabited. A young man named Joshua, able to step without the aid of a device, is recruited by an artificial intelligence to go on an expedition to find what's at the end of the seemingly infinite stack of Earths. An interesting read with a lot of cool speculation about alternate Earths and some very grounded and unfortunately relevant observations on the nature of humanity. It doesn't read like a Pratchett, although it has some very Pratchett-esque concepts in it. I liked it okay, but not enough to particularly want to read any of the sequels.

"Moving Pictures" by Terry Pratchett (reread) - The wild ideas of Holy Wood are escaping into the Discworld and causing hauntingly familiar scenes to play out in a little spit of desert by the sea - but anywhere where Things That Don't Exist can become Things That Do Exist, there will be Things That Want To Exist trying to come through.... Dryly funny as standard for Pratchett, and probably at least a quarter written just to see how many film references he could upend in one go. Featuring (what I think are) the first appearances of Gaspode The Wonder Dog and Archchancellor Munstrum Ridcully. Recommended.

"Fadeout" by Joseph Hanson - Dave Brandstetter, an insurance investigator who is "contentedly gay," investigates the mysterious disappearance of a small-town entertainer who hit the big time. Atmospheric, noir-adjacent, and pleasantly twisty, this mystery also benefits from half the cast being queer. It would be excellent if written today, and considering that it was written in the sixties, it's in a league of its own. Recommended.

"Are Prisons Obsolete?" by Angela Davis - A novelette-length essay on the origins, consequences, and possible alternatives to the prison-industrial complex, as well as a litany of reasons why it's imperative for the health of our society that the carceral state be dismantled. Thought-provoking and perspective-shifting in many ways. Recommended.

"Station Eternity" by Mur Lafferty - Mallory Viridian seems to constantly be followed by murders - and constantly finds herself solving them, too. She thought escaping Earth to a sentient space station would free her from her 'curse,' but, whoops, it doesn't. Featuring multiple sentient alien species, military interferism plots, eighty percent of a romance, and several murder cases across space and time, this felt like a book trying to do too many things at once, each interfering with the execution of the others. The detective story got lost in the space station story, and the space station story suffered from having to serve a detective story. The dialogue and the plot both clunked audibly at times, although the third act featured a clever twist and a fairly satisfying finale. The book wasn't so grating that I gave up on it, but I was glad to be done with it.

"Iron Widow" by Xiran Jay Zhao - A young woman living in a world that’s a milieu of ancient and modern China seeks vengeance against the celebrity kaiju pilot who killed her sister. And then seeks vengeance against the system which allowed said sister to be killed. And then decides: "since this system is fucking over everyone and everything I care about, how about I fuck it right back?" It's like Pacific Rim meets Handmaid's Tale meets real Chinese history, and that’s not even getting into the nuanced and incisive meditations on gender and sexuality. Recommended, but with content warnings for body horror, familial abuse, heavily implied sexual assault, and hardcore misogyny.

[barbwritesstuff]

Can I ask #4 for the get to know me asks? 👀

4. What is your favourite book?

The Amulet of Samarkand by Jonathan Stroud.

I read this book as a kid and loved it so hard.

This, along side my obsession with Yugioh, defined my last couple of years in primary school and cemented in me a love for all things urban fantasy.

For real, I was never a Harry Potter kid because I spent too much energy being obsessed with a different (and much more morally questionable) dark haired wizard boy.

I still reread the original trilogy as an adult from time to time and while it's not perfect the fun and nostalgia I get from it is unsurpassable.

There are werewolves in this story, but they take a back seat to the djinn and other spirits. It's a testament to how much I love this that I don't mind.

[izartn]

Saw various posts saying to reblog without fear, and although I’m here since like, 2017-2018, I will now proceed to reblog a lot of meta about Nathaniel from Bartimaeus my fave character as a teen girl, bc somehow I projected a lot on him. I mean Kitty’s brand of indignant justice was more my vibe (I’ve felt incandescently furious too) but there’s something about Nathaniel’s brand of vulnerability (to propaganda and feelings) that made me identify really with him. Also his moments of assholery. Also his “terrible” wardrobe in Golem’s Eye, which I felt was cool, really, bc I have a dramatic streak that is very much conveyed in my choice of clothes and when I read the book for the first time i was like 11. xD (Now I know long plissed skirts on dark dramatic colours and a black trenchcoat can have a very cool effect too)

So curiously I was gifted only the second book; Didn’t have much idea about the first. You know those books you get by relatives that have no idea about books but know which genre you like and are like. Here it is I guess.

I obssesed by like one or two years over it, rereading like crazy (the first time i started reading it I abandoned it, feeling lost and bored, the second I could get the gist of things much better and lasted until Kitty and the Resistance on Gladstone tomb, which I read alone, hidding at high hours of the night and scared me so much I couldn’t keep going, the third I loved the book and the fourth I obssesed over it) until I noticed my town’s public library had the third book! So I read it of course and cried and cried and loved and hated the ending because it was the first time I read about someone like Nathaniel with so much promise at his last hour die like that, no coming back. Also Kitty alone of those who could maybe get it ;_; It taught me about bittesweet endings and redemptions and the difficulty of change. Months later, or a year, I noticed the first book existed and was on the library and I prepared myself for a reread of the other two. It was the first time I had context for Nathaniel’s everything, and having already loved him when he was at his worst on the other’s book I cried when I understood his past. Seriously. Some of the first chapters on Samarkand’s Amulet about Nat as a kid I was. Oh. Oh no. This is why he’s like that on the other two books???

SO yeah I will reblog some posts on Nat’s and other charas. Stay tuned to catch them!!!