Home
Webmail
Sakura
Flickr
About meFantastic fiction.
In both senses of the word. Jonathan Stroud is the name of the author I’m reading now; the first two books of the Bartimaeus Trilogy are proving to be well-crafted and a lot of fun. The Amulet of Samarkand tells the tale of a young kid who learns he has magical talent and describes adventures he has while taking his first steps in the art. It is not, thankfully, a Harry Potter clone . . . The story is fresh and the world is very original. You can find more info on it by going to the Amazon page, so I’ll leave that as an exercise for the reader.
Half of the chapters are third-person descriptions of the actions of the kid and the other half are first-person narrations by this sardonic demon (Bartimaeus) who’s tired of always being summoned up to do the bidding of human masters. (That’s how magic works in this world; a magician is a person who has the talent to call up a demon, and the demon does all the heavy lifting.) Bartimaeus sprinkles footnotes throughout his passages, and they’re the funnest part of the book. Read it and see.
I like the Harry Potter books, but I think I like this guy’s writing more. Maybe a lot more. I’ll have to get through this second in the trilogy (The Golem’s Eye) and then look at some other stuff he’s done and then wait eagerly for the third Bartimaeus installment to come out.
The one thing that pisses me off about this guy’s books is the fact that he’s my age. I need to get to work over here.
(This is stolen from one or more of my other online haunts, where I first posted it.)
-
Flickr photos
www.flickr.com 
More of Durf's photos
Comments are closed for this entry.