![]() ![]() ![]() 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. ![]()
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