A parallel England, 1604 Thomas Fawkes is embarrassed. He’s sixteen now, the only student at St. Peter’s Color Academy in York who hasn’t been given hiA parallel England, 1604 Thomas Fawkes is embarrassed. He’s sixteen now, the only student at St. Peter’s Color Academy in York who hasn’t been given his own mask and can’t speak to any color. (I’ll explain to the best of my ability, something the book itself neglects to do).
Thomas gets booted from school. With no friends or family to take him in, he heads to London, drawn by the rumor that his father, Guy Fawkes the famous mercenary, has returned to England. After a number of misadventures, Thomas stumbles upon his father. But dear old Dad isn’t nearly as enthused about discovering his long-lost son as he is about the plot he and some allies have concocted to assassinate King James and all of Parliament.
This plot is just the latest escalation in a century-long war between two different philosophies of magic. The Keepers believe that each individual should only manipulate a single color, and the White Light at the source of the color spectrum is too dangerous for anyone but the wise to talk to. The Igniters commune directly with the White Light and use it to manipulate all the colors.
Thomas is a Keeper like his father before him. But he learns that someone else has a plan about that…
Content Advisory Violence: Several brief but rather nail-biting sword fights, and a shootout at the end. A man goes about stabbing people and animals with an infected knife and giving them the plague. The MC and his young lady friend are frequently menaced by hoodlums and conspirators in dark alleys. One of these scuffles leaves Thomas bleeding profusely.
There are two mass hangings, one including a child, who escapes the noose and runs. Brief discussion of the full punishment for treason: hanging until nearly dead, drawing (disembowelment) and quartering (dismemberment).
A man strikes his fiancée across the face. She hits back.
The whole plot revolves about a bunch of men plotting to blow a building filled with hundreds of people to kingdom come.
Sex: Some verbal sparring, buttoned-up, costume-drama flirtation, and a single kiss between Thom and Emma. Our hero watches with contemptuous amusement as a young couple sneaks away from a party with obvious horniness.
Language: One or two uses of “bloody.”
Substance Abuse: Some of the plotters seem to be heavy boozers. In fairness, they could hardly drink the water in 1604 London…
Nightmare Fuel: This universe suffers a magical blight called the Stone Plague, which literally petrifies its victims. Sometimes it spreads quickly through the host body, turning them into a statue in a matter of minutes. Other times it fastens to a particular part of the anatomy and destroys it long before it kills the victim. When we first meet Thomas, he has a stone eye and eyelid which he hides under an eye patch. (view spoiler)[He briefly becomes entirely stone, before the plague recedes but maintains its hold on both his eyes. A while later, he regains his sight in a highly symbolic manner (hide spoiler)].
Politics: We see the beginning of racism in England as it joins in the African slave trade. Many Londoners get spooked when they see a black person. King James holds a masquerade with a slavery theme, wherein white nobles paint themselves ebon—it’s not quite the same thing as the vile minstrel shows that appeared in the United States in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, but this is where it started. Thomas rightly feels uncomfortable watching.
Religion: The whole thing is an allegory of the Protestant Reformation, veiled very thinly indeed. The White Light is clearly God, Who is portrayed with more affability and snark than grandeur.
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Kill the King, Brandes’ historical notes at the end of the book are extremely brief, and assume the reader already knows most of the true story. I myself knew little of this particular episode, so here’s some background info. Let’s start with a timeline of the Reformation:
1517 – Martin Luther, disgusted by the corruption of the Renaissance Vatican, writes the 95 Theses, starting Reformation fever throughout Europe.
1532 – Henry VIII, driven by paranoia over a lack of male heirs and an obsession with one of his wife’s ladies-in-waiting, declares the Pope has no authority in England. Catholic religious, and secular subjects who refuse to follow Henry as religious leader, are executed.
1553 – Mary I, Catholic daughter of Henry and Catherine of Aragon, inherits the throne from her Protestant half-brother Edward VI. Intending to eradicate Protestantism from England, Mary has nearly 300 Protestants burned at the stake as heretics.
1570 – Pope Pius V issues a papal bull declaring Elizabeth I, Protestant daughter of Henry and Anne Boleyn, illegitimate and absolving her subjects of having to follow her. Elizabeth doesn’t want to kill subjects just for having a different religious practice—it didn’t exactly make her father or sister popular—but she has no qualms about executing those she sees as disloyal, and as her reign goes on, these people become disproportionately Catholic (or Puritan, but that’s a story for another time).
1603 – James VI of Scotland becomes James I of England. English Catholics hope for an ally in James, since his mother Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots, was a staunch Catholic. But James is Protestant and continues his cousin Elizabeth’s legacy of persecution.
Ostensibly, Catholics in England had the right to worship as they chose, provided they professed the British crown, and not the Papacy, was the most important power on Earth. But thousands of Catholics cherished the Church above the State and were called traitors for it. The punishment for treason, as mentioned earlier, was hanging, drawing, and quartering.
This was the environment in which several desperate, unhinged Catholic Englishmen concluded that the only way to stop the persecution was to blast King James and Parliament to smithereens.
The plot itself proceeded quite closely to how it was portrayed in the novel. The only major difference, besides the given one that the real plotters had no magical powers to help them, is the presence of young Thomas Fawkes. The International Genealogy Index (IGI), compiled by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, records that Guy Fawkes married Maria Pulleyn, daughter of his schoolmaster, in 1590, and their son Thomas was born in 1591. But these records are considered a secondary source, and there’s no other known information about the marriage or Thomas.
Covered in the Colors, Pulled Apart at the Seams I give Nadine Brandes all kinds of credit for coming up with this world. It’s colorful (I’m sorry), exciting, and a fine place to immerse yourself for a few days of reading.
There’s just one problem. The magic system, while beguiling, doesn’t make any sense.
Magic is a hard thing to write well. Too much explanation takes the wonder out of it, when wonder is the whole point of having magic in the first place. But at the same time, too little explanation of the magic in a given story can be maddening. Especially if it’s one of those books where Everyone is a Mage. Fawkes is one of those books.
My favorite example of a magic system remains the one Garth Nix created for his Old Kingdom universe. It’s consistent and as lucid as magic ever could be without completely stripping it of mystery and glamour. He spends a few pages in the early chapters of Sabriel detailing the MC’s magical education and methods. By taking a little time to explain, instead of dropping the reader headfirst into a foreign world, Nix never needs to repeat it, and we can follow the rest of the story with ease. When Sabriel writes a rune in the air or rings any of her sacred bells, we know precisely what she’s doing, why she’s doing it, and what the likely result will be.
Whereas when Emma Areben, Benedict Norwood, and the other characters of Fawkes did their color-speaking, I often had no idea what to picture. Below, the magic system of this book as far as I could understand it:
In this universe, colors are semi-sentient entities. A given person can bond with a specific color (never really explained how) and the objects around them that are their color obey them. Someone who communes with Red can drain the blood from an enemy’s body, or alternatively coax the heart of a freshly-dead friend into beating again.
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A Blue-speaker can manipulate water.
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A Grey-speaker can lift rocks.
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A Brown-speaker, like Emma, can command wood and soil.
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It would appear that everyone but beggars has some color power in this society.
Wearing a mask painted a given color solidifies a person’s bond with that color, which is why Thomas is so ashamed to be the only conspirator with no mask. But the function of the masks themselves is unclear. This is a good place to mention that THERE’S NO FUN IN A MASQUERADE BALL IF EVERYONE WEARS A MASK ALL THE TIME ANYWAY.
The most powerful color is the White Light, which is the font of all other colors.
Let the Spectrum In
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By the time this story begins, the color-control system has been in place for one-thousand six-hundred years.
In the olden times, the White Light reached out to people directly, but the wise men taught that ordinary people were too weak to speak to it, the source of all power. So for centuries, only those sages could interact directly with the Light. Ordinary folk were discouraged from seeking it out and told to ignore it if it sought them instead. Each mage was allowed to only manipulate a single color…
…until the mid-sixteenth century, when someone whom the book refers to only as “Luther” and some unnamed allies had a breakthrough. Why, everyone should be able to talk to the White Light! And use it to manipulate all the colors! These radical dudes became known as “Igniters”, opposed to the “Keepers” of the old ways.
It’s like the Verities vs. the EƋians in My Lady Jane, only without the humor.
Brandes actually does an excellent job showing the brutality of the Protestant English regime to its Catholic subjects. But while the book is sympathetic to the Catholic plight, it’s still based on a misunderstanding of what the Reformation was really about.
What a lot of people don’t know about Martin Luther is that he really didn’t want to split from the Church in Rome. He had no problem with the Catholic practices modern Protestants tend to find unnerving—perhaps most startlingly, he maintained a lifelong devotion to the Virgin Mary. Luther never even left the Church of his own volition; he was excommunicated by the Pope.
He felt compelled to speak against Church corruption, which by his time was rank. Luther was sent to Rome for a conference of his monastic order, where he witnessed priests mocking their faith and participating in debauchery.
In 1516 – 17, Pope Leo X initiated a new program of indulgences—wherein people paid the Church to forgive their own sins or let the souls of their dearly departed out of Hell. The Vatican coffers were empty because Leo emptied them on hunting expeditions and depraved parties. The higher branches of Church bureaucracy were heavy with equally rotten fruit.
From Luther’s famous anti-indulgence post on the cathedral doors, other thinkers piled on until they had a movement, and what had started as an uptight, fiery German monk trying to clean up the extant Church became innumerable men building churches of their own. Heads of state saw the opportunity to drive papal authority out of their lands. Henry VIII was about as spiritual as the average aardvark, he just wanted the power to grant himself divorces.
Back to Fawkes . Keepers = Catholics. Igniters = Protestants. White Light = God. Talking to the White Light = prayer/reading the Bible.
So Brandes is implying that the Catholic hierarchy did not even allow the faithful to pray to God directly. Wow. What?!? And then there’s that “They weren’t even allowed to read the Bible!” meme that Melanie Dickerson already beat to death five books ago.
The average pauper or peasant during the medieval and Renaissance eras couldn’t read, period. Public schools didn’t exist; only the wealthy could afford tutors or college. But the Church, for all its other horrifying problems, really did want the people to know the foundational stories of their faith.
So they covered churches in art depicting scenes from the Bible and the lives of the saints. The major episodes of the Life of Christ were also told through the specific artwork/meditation combination called the Stations of the Cross, and the lengthy meditative prayer, the Rosary. The lower classes may not have been able to quote the Scriptures word for word, but they knew what they believed, and they prayed frequently, multiple times a day.
The idea that the entire Catholic Church conspired for centuries to keep the populace ignorant of the Bible’s contents is ludicrous. If you want to make the Reformation look like a good or at least necessary thing, all you need to do is tell the truth. The Vatican was a playground for power-hungry monsters, and they preyed on peoples’ fear of Hellfire to take their money. Someone needed to shine a light on these cockroaches, and Luther (who had some serious issues himself) wound up being the one who started it. As a Catholic, I’m grateful that someone did it, because I hate to imagine what my church would look like now with no reform.
The reality is a much better story than the Don’t-Let-Them-Read-the-Bible conspiracy.
Conclusions Fawkes merges history with fantasy elements, which don’t always make sense but are certainly entertaining. The book is a lot of fun for its own sake and would make a fantastic movie. That said, I found that it misconstrued what the fight between the Gunpowder Plotters and the King was really about. Just remember that it’s meant to entertain more than educate and I think you’ll enjoy it as I did....more
In the tradition of such gems of satirical whimsy as The Princess Bride, Howl’s Moving Castleand The Wee Free Men (in fact, I caught a few PB referencIn the tradition of such gems of satirical whimsy as The Princess Bride, Howl’s Moving Castleand The Wee Free Men (in fact, I caught a few PB references and a possible shout-out to WFM), My Lady Jane is a rollicking fairytale-inspired adventure. Like PB and HMC, it features swoony romance balanced out by lots of humor. What makes this one unique is that it doubles as alternative history.
In this parallel universe, half the population of England are ordinary humans, and half are shape-shifters called EƋians, each taking on the shape of the animal that best suits their personality. EƋians have historically been persecuted, although this was alleviated somewhat when King Henry VIII revealed his lion alter-ego, and used it to terrorize and occasionally devour his enemies at home and abroad.
Now Henry is dead and his frail son, sixteen-year-old Edward, rules. Edward knows he probably won’t live long, given his illness (amusingly known only as “the Affliction”), and he sulks over the prospect of never getting to kiss a girl. He’s a lonely lad, whose only true companion is his little lapdog, Petunia or Pet for short. Edward has a vague feeling that his officials are exploiting him, but investigating further would take away valuable time from his wallowing-in-self-pity schedule.
Told repeatedly by the royal doctor that he’ll die any day now, Edward is pressured by his chancellor, Lord Dudley, to name his cousin Lady Jane Grey—or rather, her eventual son—as heir to the throne.
Meanwhile Dudley has arranged for Jane to marry his son Gifford, who has been kept out of public life. Rumors swirl around Gifford—some say he spends his days in taverns and brothels; others allege that he’s mad or “simple” and is locked in a room in the family manor.
The truth is that Gifford—G, as he would rather be called—is an EƋian who can’t control his metamorphosis. Through no fault of his own, he is only human at night. He spends his daylight hours as a horse. A magnificent horse, he would want me to add.
Jane is skeptical of yet another strategic engagement, and would much rather be left to herself to read. She becomes even more biased against her future husband when his older brother maliciously tells her that Gifford is a rake. (This isn’t true at all, but poor Jane will spend the bulk of the book believing it).
Suffice that the unhappy girl is made even more miserable by the strange arrangements for the wedding, such as the insistence on holding it after sundown, and makes a terrible impression on her new husband, who has no idea what he’s done that she should already resent him. They spend the wedding night not going near each other, and the situation is not helped in the least when he transforms into a stallion in the first rays of dawn.
Meanwhile, Edward makes two shocking discoveries. One, his doctor and his old nursemaid are in a conspiracy with Lord Dudley and several other officials, and have been poisoning him slowly for some time. Two, his little dog is really an EƋian—a rather stupid one who’s much more used to her dog form. In human form, she’s too stupid to realize she needs clothes.
Faced with the threat of assassination, Edward is encouraged by his sister Elizabeth, called Bess in this story, to reach inside himself for his own inner EƋian—she reveals to him that his mother, the late Jane Seymour, could turn into a lovely white swan. Edward’s alter ego is also winged—a kestrel. In this disguise he flees the palace and makes for the out-of-the-way country lodge where his grandmother, Elizabeth of York, still lives, despite the public believing she’s been dead for fifty years.
Jane and Gifford are busy bickering and not even attempting to act married when they are summoned to London in the dead of night. They are told that Edward has died, and before she can process what’s happened Jane is crowned queen. Then almost immediately she and her husband are dethroned, imprisoned, and sentenced to execution by Mary. Mary belongs to a faction called the Verities, who believe that all EƋians should be killed.
(view spoiler)[In this crisis, Jane, who’s always secretly wished to be an EƋian, discovers that she is one, her animal form being a ferret. (hide spoiler)] She and Gifford flee with Pet to Elizabeth of York’s house…
Meanwhile Edward, who apparently has no sense of direction as a kestrel, has gotten himself lost in Scotland, and is saved from certain death by a pretty and feisty young urchin named Gracie. Gracie is—wait for it—an EƋian herself. Her animal shape is a fox, which Edward believes suits her very well. Because, well, you know…she’s [image] Eventually they all (view spoiler)[(including Bess, who can turn into a black cat like her mother before her) (hide spoiler)] meet up at “Gran’s” place and form a crazy plan to take back England from Mary before she purges the island of EƋians.
My Lady Jane is enormous fun overall. I sped through the book, laughing out loud at least twenty times. As I mentioned earlier, the sense of humor is very similar to The Princess Bride and that’s one of my favorite movies (I still have yet to read the book). If you liked that, you’ll probably enjoy this too.
Really, there were only two things that bothered me about this book.
The first complaint is that the EƋians vs. Verities conflict is a thinly disguised allegory for Protestants vs. Catholics—even though the metaphor would work better the other way around. Observe that it was the prim and proper European countries that turned Protestant during the Reformation, while the wild and crazy peoples—the Spanish, the French, and especially the Italians—remained Catholic. Watch this Simpsons clip and tell me which of the two Heavens you’re more likely to find shape-shifters in: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4Ile...
That said, I can’t help but feel that the book is obliquely—and possibly accidentally—anti-Catholic. And while Mary I gets a bad rep from nearly everyone, I can feel only pity for her, after the humiliation and emotional trauma she suffered from age twelve on up at the hands of her father, and eventually her skeevy husband, Phillip II of Spain.
That said, I’m not surprised but still disappointed that these authors decided to make her the one-dimensional villain of the piece. Her backstory is immensely sympathetic but never even alluded to, and (view spoiler)[her hidden EƋian form is that of a donkey, which is how we leave her in this story. It might be a shout-out to Rabadash’s fall in The Horse and His Boy, but even so—Mary deserved better. (hide spoiler)]
Also, I’m a huge fan of Elizabeth I, but she turned into a bloodthirsty and paranoid anti-Catholic in her old age and it always annoys me when this goes unaddressed. There is no mention in this book of how “good Queen Bess” went on to hunt “Verities” out of the country and behead those that she found.
The other quibble is only for the first quarter of the book, but irritated me quite a bit while it lasted: the constant snickering at Lord Dudley and his elder son, Stan, for having large noses. Bringing it up once would have been excusable, but it was a running gag for the first hundred pages or so and got to seeming very childish. You’d think it had never occurred to these three ladies that some men with big noses are actually quite handsome. Here’s a few I could think of right away: [image]
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Bet you wouldn't say no to any of them, now would you, Jane?
Overall, this is a frothy, good-natured, frequently hilarious little YA novel. There is only one instance of real violence, a few innuendoes (mostly involving how EƋians always involuntarily lose their clothes when they morph) and no other problematic content. Fine for ages 13 and up. Just please remember that Mary Tudor had a good reason to be the way she was, and that Catholics and people with big noses are human too....more
So this, while a completely different kind of story, goes up with The Queen of Attolia as an example of that rare phenomena, a second installment expoSo this, while a completely different kind of story, goes up with The Queen of Attolia as an example of that rare phenomena, a second installment exponentially better than the first. (Not that The Thief was bad, but I digress). Full review coming soon...boy, am I tired of writing that phrase. Soon, I shall have my laptop back! *cackles maniacally*...more
After reading and reviewing so many stupid books, it makes me very happy to introduce a good one.
Toads and Diamonds by Heather Tomlinson takes place iAfter reading and reviewing so many stupid books, it makes me very happy to introduce a good one.
Toads and Diamonds by Heather Tomlinson takes place in an imaginary land - the Hundred Kingdoms - very similar to India under Moghul rule during the 1500s - 1700s. The natives worship twelve gods and practice vegetarianism. The invaders are monotheists.
Diribani and Tana are the daughters of a poor widow. Diribani is beautiful and kind. Tana is plain and snarky, but clever. In a twist patterned on a Perrault fairytale, both girls give a drink of water to a goddess in disguise - for which she rewards them. Now Diribani can't speak without flowers and precious gems spilling from her mouth; likewise Tana can't speak without spitting out toads and snakes.
It's no spoiler to say that Diribani's gift attracts a position at court and a handsome prince. But Tana is feared and hunted by the invader authorities, who believe her animals are evil. (The natives believe frogs are lucky, and snakes eat household pests).
Tomlinson clearly did her homework on Indian flora, fauna, food, fashion, and architecture. Her writing is so descriptive as to be transporting. Despite all the detail, the chapters are short and the pace never flags. Her protagonists and supporting characters are relatable and empathetic.
This richly-imagined, squeaky-clean book is warmly recommended
You may also like: - Wildwood Dancing by Juliet Marillier, another fairytale adaptation featuring a quasi-historical setting and awesome sisters - Vessel by Sarah Beth Durst, set in an alternative ancient Middle Eastern culture - Book of a Thousand Days by Shannon Hale, set in an alternative medieval Mongolian culture - Jahanara: Princess of Princesses by Kathryn Lasky, a look at a real-life princess whose existence was much like that of the fictional Princess Ruqayya in Toads and Diamonds...more
In a world much like historical ancient Sumer, there exist two nearby kingdoms, one monotheistic, the other polytheistic. The gods of the polytheisticIn a world much like historical ancient Sumer, there exist two nearby kingdoms, one monotheistic, the other polytheistic. The gods of the polytheistic kingdom are temperamental, but ultimately have the best interests of their worshippers at heart. The one god of the other city-state, Admat, is jealous and bloodthirsty. The other gods appear in the flesh among their people on festival days; Admat’s omens are ambiguous and his face is hidden.
Atop the magic-shrouded mountain outside the polytheistic kingdom, Olus the wind god is born. As a child, he attempts to befriend a human boy, but his efforts only get the boy in trouble. Guilty, Olus withdraws from the society of mortals.
Until he walks in the city of Admat and meets a lovely girl named Kezi. Kezi is an accomplished dancer and weaver, and she is marked for death. Her mother was gravely ill, her father prayed to Admat, and promised the god that he would offer the first person who congratulated him on his wife’s recovery as a sacrifice.
Kezi has a month to live, but she will never die if Olus has anything to say about it. In order to make her a goddess, he must bring her to the threshold of the Underworld and let her harrow it. Meanwhile he too will be tested. In the Land of the Dead, she almost loses her memory for good, and seeks for proof of Admat’s existence but does not find it.
The more time I’ve had to mull over this book, the more anti-Judeo-Christian it comes across. It could not be clearer who Admat really is—the epigraph from the Book of Judges should make that clear literally from the first page. While Admat is portrayed as perpetually angry and paranoid, Olus and his family are the sweetest little gang of deities you’ll ever meet. Granted, Olus’ mother causes earthquakes when she’s angry, and the god of prophecy (who should have been a much bigger character) is delightfully eerie. But any ancient pantheon, especially Near Eastern, should be far more severe and (for some individuals) grotesque than those shown here.
Like The Two Princesses of Bamarre and Fairest, Levine introduces fascinating concepts halfway through, but runs out of either space, momentum, or ideas, and the best parts of the book are abruptly abandoned in favor of more sweet-but-bloodless teen romance.
Three stars for a cool subject. I give Levine props for tackling these themes: Cupid and Psyche, ancient Mesopotamia, and Old Testament human sacrifice.
However, the book is too short to develop the rich undercurrents beyond a minimum level of analysis. It poses deep theological questions that it can't answer, given the short span of pages, and Levine would rather spend those pages on tender teenage romance. Note, though, that The Queen of Attolia was not much longer and had a great balance of mysticism, romance, political skullduggery, and war (the last two of which don't even figure into Ever at all).
The prose is convincingly ancient in its simplicity (although I do wish Levine wouldn't use the phrase "Adam's apple" which makes no sense in this pre-Judeo-Christian world). The characters are not complex, but likable and sweet anyway - especially Olus the adorable boy-god. The insta-love is less cloying than usual in this mythological context - it comes with the territory here, although few gods were as gentle as Olus, and few mortal girls were as willing as Kezi.
Based on this and Two Princesses, which is probably due a reread, I think Levine's books are good, but could be great given a hundred or so more pages to expand the themes, raise the stakes, and give a little grit to the male leads. Hey HarperCollins editors, would it kill you to let her write a four-hundred-page book?
The content is technically appropriate for upper middle school kids: all the violence takes place off-page, there is no sexual content beyond the chaste but frequent kisses between the young lovebirds, and there’s no four-letter words or substance abuse. There are frightening images but nothing worse than what you’d find in Lord of the Rings or Narnia—a good deal milder than those, in fact.
My only caveat is the anti-religious subtext. Once you see it, you can’t not see it. ...more
The Amulet of Samarkand opens with a thorough, evocative, bone-chilling description of a supernatural entity being summoned by a child magician. The rThe Amulet of Samarkand opens with a thorough, evocative, bone-chilling description of a supernatural entity being summoned by a child magician. The room is filled with smoke and noxious odor. The temperature drops. Behind the smoke there is a vast and impermeable darkness, and out of this darkness two glowing yellow eyes menace the boy in the opposite pentacle.
And then the narrator, who has stayed out of the way these first few paragraphs, reveals his identity and breaks the fourth wall in a single, out-of-nowhere conclusion: “Hey, it was his first time. I wanted to scare him.”
Meet Bartimaeus, a seven-thousand-year-old djinni with the bitterness of millennia in slavery, but the mercuriality of a small child and the snark of a clever, arrogant adolescent.
Who has enslaved this mighty spirit for seven thousand years? Magicians without number. This world is ours, but openly governed by magicians. And one learns quickly, despite Bart being the most unreliable narrator on the planet, that these magicians are just as corrupt and heartless as he says they are.
This time his summoner is but a lad—a creepily pale, scrawny, focused boy of about twelve. The kid is apprenticed to one Arthur Underwood, a poor-to-middling mage with a low-ranking government position. Underwood lacks the strength or know-how to summon as powerful an entity as Bartimaeus (and Bart will never tire of boasting about his power and rank. You’ve been warned). Yet his wee apprentice has done so, and mighty Bartimaeus is confused.
He’s even more baffled when the boy orders him to steal the Amulet of Samarkand—a legendary object that supposedly imprisons an entity several times as powerful as any djinn—from Simon Lovelace, high-ranking politician and formidable warlock. This will be a dangerous mission, that Bartimaeus has no wish to undertake. But the boy knows all the right spells to bypass a djinni’s will…
Stroud brings to life a resplendently dark, decaying parallel London of uncertain historical era (they have cars, but rely on magic for nearly all other technology. Their main form of entertainment is live theatre, and films and television are never mentioned). In this book we’re confined to mainly observing the magicians’ society, an utterly Machiavellian, shallow place where it’s a marvel if someone manages to grow up there and keep a small piece of their heart alive.
The magicians bicker and backstab, while two underclasses seethe beneath them. One of these underclasses consists of the spirits they enslave, who are sometimes referred to as demons in this novel but Bart insists in later installments that “demon” is a derogatory term. These beings have no free will while in the human world and have to carry out their orders no matter what.
The other underclass is the humans without magic, who for centuries have been shut out of all branches of the government or positions of power. Unlike the spirits, they have free will. Unlike them, they can rise.
And rise is what they’re doing. Roving bands of commoners, usually youths and children because the adults have become too disillusioned with the struggle, prowl the alleys of London, looking for magicians and spirits to mug. Both Bartimaeus and the boy—his name is Nathaniel—run afoul of these kids at some points.
One young resistor runs into them frequently. The girl’s name is Kitty, and while she gets little airtime in this book she becomes a protagonist in the second and third volumes.
Stroud is outstanding at characterization. Bartimaeus is so over-the-top he seems to leap from the page in seven dimensions and a color spectrum that the human eye can’t fully perceive. Nathaniel is a much subtler creature, and his passages are not narrated by him, which creates additional distance. But even when held at arm’s length by this device, we feel the pain of this mistreated, brilliant child. We want him to have justice without being corrupted by vengeance, even as we know he will be.
(view spoiler)[There are no real “good guys” in this story—yet—and how Stroud takes three amoral main characters and transforms them into selfless heroes by the end of the trilogy will leave you breathless. (hide spoiler)]
Content Advisory:
Despite the cover artwork featuring a gargoyle rather than an adolescent Hollister model, this is not a middle-grade book, but a YA novel with a younger-than-usual protagonist (Nat is fifteen when we see him next). That said:
Violence: Rebels set off a bomb at a government celebration that kills a few and leaves many more injured (nothing graphic shown). Spirits of various strengths overpower humans and swallow them whole. Big spirits swallow smaller spirits. Spirits take on horrifying forms to terrorize humans and each other. Some kids in the Resistance beat up Bartimaeus in human form, and later Nathaniel. Nathaniel is humiliated by his master and corporally punished by a high-ranking official. A human assassin slits somebody’s throat, and we see the murder through a scry-glass darkly. Humans imprisoning and magically torturing spirits is the whole premise of the book.
Sex: Bart, having been unable to frighten Nathaniel with his grotesque disguises, wonders if he should try manifesting as a pretty, scantily-clad girl next time and see if that spooks the boy. There’s also a gag at one point about a garden statue of a Greek god amorously embracing a dolphin. Bart and Nat’s plan to stop the nefarious Lovelace from taking over the government involves knocking out quite a few people and stealing their clothes.
Language: A few instances of “bloody,” “hell,” and “damn.”
Substance Abuse: Adults imbibe at parties.
Any Other Triggers: Am orphan child is treated horribly by his guardians—in a much more realistic way than Harry Potter was. Several magicians attempt to murder a young boy. The whole plot of the book involves calling on spirits who are sometimes referred to as “demons”, using pentacles and incantations (which are never transcribed). The spirits, when they wish to be frightening, can give off a sulfurous odor. The magicians are clearly depicted as evil, but we spend a LOT of time with them.
All in all, Stroud is an outstanding writer and his Bartimaeus Sequence is arguably the best magician-themed fantasy series to emerge from the post-Potter boom in the early 2000s. He takes risks that few other authors in the genre dared back then, to say nothing of now. This series deserves a much bigger fanbase. Warmly recommended for fantasy lovers ages thirteen and up. The second and third books are even better than this one. ...more
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