Customer Reviews

The Golem's Eye

5 star:		(87)
4 star:		(38)
3 star:		(18)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

The sharp-tongued djinn of "Amulet of Samarkand" returns in the second book of Jonathan Stroud's Bartimaeus Trilogy. It's a solid fantasy romp with some sharp social commentary and chilling wizardry, but it suffers from somewhat less of the delightfully observant Bartimaeus.

It's been two years since budding magician Nathaniel summoned the djinn Bartimaeus, and the two ended up enmeshed in a bizarre conspiracy. Now Nathaniel is working his way up in the world of politics and magic, with the sardonic Bartimaeus as his servant. But then the two end up in another hair-raising adventure -- a golem is attacking people in London, and Nathaniel is trying to find out who sent it, and why.

Meanwhile, the resistance against the magicians is growing, and the golem is supposedly an instrument against the magicians. But that isn't quite the case. Instead, a fiery young resistance member, Kitty, is doing some plotting of a very different sort -- and her plans will bring her neck-to-neck with Nathaniel and Bartimaeus.

Stroud takes readers to a parallel world where England is ruled not by bluebloods, but by wizards. It's not a new idea, but he gives it a new spin by wrapping it in political power as well as magic. If the backstabbing mage's world of the first book wasn't chilling enough, Stroud presents the eerie Night Police in this one.

Stroud's writing is solid and detailed, with plenty of gloomy atmosphere and the occasional hair-raising episode. Perhaps the biggest flaw of this book is that the action more often than not focuses on Nathaniel rather than the cynically lovable Bartimaeus. However, it's to Stroud's credit that he can make the intricate political plotting so interesting, while mixing in some grimly funny magic as well.

Nathaniel is still a flawed anti-hero, like Harry Potter's more ambitious cousin. While he's a passable lead character, the one who really steals all the scenes is Bartimaeus. He doesn't appear nearly enough, but his acerbic observations tend to be right on the money. And Kitty is a more likable person than Nathaniel, with a bit more fire in her personality.

The sequel to "Amulet of Samarkand" suffers from a lack of djinn, but Jonathan Stroud manages to keep it going at a steady pace. "The Golem's Eye" is a creepy fantasy read, for anyone seeking something a bit darker and deeper than Harry Potter.

The 2nd book of the Bartimaeus Trilogy, The Golem's Eye, is a satisfying read, if slightly darker in tone. As the other reviews have stated, Bartimaeus' inclusion in the story is smaller, with him and Nathaniel having about thirteen chapters each, and the bulk of the story going to Kitty, who is a member of the Resistance. However, even with my inital disappointment at seeing less of Bartimaeus, Stroud weaves an intricate and complex story that will keep you in suspense toward the end of the book and leave you with more questions than answers.

Also, advancement in character development, for me, made up for the slightly gloomier tone, with all three main characters reaching a turning point in their character growth, the most intriguing one, interestingly, being Bartimaeus.

Speaking of Bartimaeus, even though his chapters are fewer, they are as witty as ever, even funnier than in the last book, so they will not disappoint.

At first it may be a jarring read for those expecting a similar setup as "Amulet", but in my opinion it is still a very enjoyable read, and will make you wait as anxiously for the 3rd book as you did for the second.

I consider the first Bartimaeus book to be one of the top five or so novels I have read in the past five years, so the standard it created was exceptionally high. Indeed, one suspects that Stroud felt some nervousness as he wrote and published "The Golem's Eye," as the ceiling effect set by the first novel was bound to set him up for cranky reviewers. And, as one can tell from perusing the other reviews on Amazon, that did in fact occur. Bartimaeus is such a wonderful character that some people did not appreciate the fact that he now shares the scene with two other main characters. And, as a consequence, the biting wit and sarcasm factor of the sequel has been diminished somewhat.

But it is still an excellent book, one that will capture readers' imagination and keep them turning pages way past their bedtimes, children and adults alike. I personally found that the inclusion of Kitty and the corresponding greater emphasis on the Resistance actually contributed greatly to the depth and complexity of the novel. Rather than being yet another children's book about magicians that portrays characters as either rather unidimensional heroes or villians (and yes that means the Harry Potter books), the Bartimaeus trilogy raises and thoughtfully discusses heavier issues, such as the importance of personal liberty, whether there can be such a thing as a benign totalitarian society, and the psychology of the enslaved. Bartimaeus's evolution in thinking in regard to this latter issue is especially intriguing; we see in this sequel his growing awareness of, and weariness with, his fate of always serving as slave to beings who are his intellectual inferiors. Book 3 promises to bring these issues to a head in what will undoubtedly be an explosive conflict between the three main characters. Will Bartimaeus and Kitty join forces? Will Bartimaeus be the first djinni to escape servitude? Will Nathaniel revert course and turn back into a likable person or head even further down the slippery slope toward being a power-hungry magician? Will the Resistance succeed in overthrowing the rule of the magicians?

I hope you're typing furiously, Mr. Stroud. An eager public waits.

Bottom line: Do not let the other reviews opining that the sequel is not as good as the first Bartimaeus book deter you. I'm not sure I agree with that assessment, and even if I did, it would be because I consider the first book to be essentially perfect, and it is hard to improve on perfection.

I didn't think it could be possible, but Jonathan Stroud's second part of his Bartimaeus Trilogy exceeds the greatness of the first book. Denser and much more intricately plotted, the story centers much more on Kitty, the young girl at the center of the Resistance movement, who was seen briefly in "The Amulet..." Set two years later Nathaniel is now working for the government, and becoming quite full of himself.When someting begins to destroy cherished parts of London, Nathaniel is enlisted to uncover what's behind it; A task he can't do without the help of a wise djinni he's used before. Like other reviewers I also wished Bartimaeus had more page time as his role is greatly diminished, but it doesn't detract from what a great book this is. Highly recommended.

This is an appeal to all you fantasy-loving adults out there: DO NOT pass this one up just because of the YA label. I am a 23-year-old who has been reading fantasy since I snuck off with my mother's Terry Brooks novels at the age of six, and these are undoubtedly, regardless of label, some of the best fantasy out there right now. Yes, kids can easily read these books, but the deft politics and dry humor will undoubtedly appeal to more adults than just me.

Is this one better than the first? Oh yes. Placed two years after The Amulet of Samarkand, Nathaniel now has secured a government seat, and is already learning the ins and outs of politics quite well (in his eyes, at least--Bartimaeus sees it very differently). The Resistance is still going strong, and in this book we learn the history of it and get some more information on its key players, most notably Kitty. The book is smart, funny, and fast-paced, mingling backstory and action expertly. Consider it the younger sibling of Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell--it's almost like a modern-day version of the same English-magic parallel universe. Do not under any circumstances pass this one up.

If you read the first book in this trilogy, you most likely don't even need a review to decide on reading The Golem's Eye. The Golem's Eye is almost as good as The Amulet of Samarkand, not that I think anyone expected the sequel to be even better. In fact, continuing the storyline, I believe improving on the The Amulet of Samarkand would have been impossible now that Nathanial's role is more defined as he holds a position in the government. The increased focus on Kitty's story is definitely an improvement. The moral conflicts are an improvement from The Amulet of Samarkand and are much more thought provoking. Too many stories today are black and white, good vs. evil and very boring. The Golem's Eye doesn't fall into this category. I'll be happy as long as they don't make this trilogy into a movie, or commercialize it otherwise. So much well written literature has been ruined this way. I also enjoyed the increased length of the book, for obvious reasons, and I can't wait for the third book.

I found The Golem's Eye VERY exciting althought I admit Bartimaeus didn't appear as often as he did in the 1st book. The reason why he didnt come alot is because now the author is focusing on 3(Bartimaeus, Nathaniel, and Kitty) people instead of 2(Bartimaues and Nathaniel),nevertheless it's still incredible! I found Kitty and Nathaniel's parts fairly appealing,even though (naturally) Bartimaues whips the spotlight. I can hardly wait for the next(and sadly the last)book... The Golems Eye keeps you at the edge of your seat, sometimes throwing you off....

While reading the reviews for this book, I realized that people make the same complaint time after time. It's something along the lines of this: "Jonathan Stroud put in way too much detail and he didn't include Bartimaeus enough, so the book's really boring."

I, on the other hand, found The Golem's Eye fascinating. I know that people want to understand a reviewer's point without having to read a long, rambling description of the plot, so I'm going to to reveal as little of the story as possible. Besides, I don't want to focus on the story. I want to focus on Stroud's presentation of the story, because that's what makes this book special.

The Golem's Eye centers on the actions of fourteen-year-old Nathaniel, a prodigy in Stroud's half-real-half-fantasy world of magicians. After the events of the first book in the series, The Amulet of Samarkand, he's gotten to be somewhat of a hotshot, and consequently has turned from a confused boy with an unfortuante upbringing to a serious jerk. To solve a mystery that's been puzzling the monstrous British Empire, he must summon the cranky, sarcastic spirit Bartimaeus. In the meantime, a non-magician named Kitty Jones is working in the underground, anti-magician Resistance to get revenge for the terrible things magicians have done to her.

That's all you have to know to understand my review. I won't reveal any plot twists, and I won't give away the ending. I won't tell you any of that. It's not necessary, and I don't want to ruin the book for anyone who hasn't read it.

I firmly believe that the people who complained about the detail don't have the patience to appreciate the parts that aren't either funny or filled with action. Just because a book is detailed doesn't mean it's boring. Although some books with quick plots and lots of explosions are very good (The Amulet of Samarkand is one of these), the best books of all have more to them than that. Stroud could have made the story of Golem's Eye into another Amulet of Samarkand, but he chose to create a deeper, more thought-provoking tale, whose power comes more from its fullness and expression than from the plot itself. A worse writer could have taken the same story and turned it into a superficial load of nonsense, just like most of the other fantasy stories that rule the market nowadays, but Stroud made it great.

Take, for example, Nathaniel's life. The descriptions of his job, his clothes, his habits, the way he carries himself, they're all there to show us what a cutthroat world has done to a kid who could once be called good. Stroud wants us to have a villain we can feel sorry for, someone to hate as we desperately wish we could jump into the book and force him to become the thoughtful person he once was. Stroud didn't do this just to make the story more interesting, either. The same kind of thing happens to kids all the time. They have bad upbringings, and then they turn into people they shouldn't have been. Granted, Stroud didn't have to add this angle to the story, but no fantasy is complete without a few strong connections to the real world.

Then there's Kitty's life, as bad as Nathaniel's in its own way. Stroud's descriptions of the things the magicians have done to her, especially the aftermath of the incident with her friend Jakob, are so vivid that they're painful to read. Countless books work the story of a wronged person seeking revenge into the plot, but I've never felt for a character as strongly as I felt for Kitty when I read about her past. And it wasn't the traditional stuff about so-and-so killed my parents. It was more subtle than that, subtle enough to add that creepy taste of realism once again. So when Kitty's fighting for revenge and doing what she knows is right against impossible odds, you have to support her. You just have to.

Now, to come back to Bartimaeus. To fully appreciate them, you have to accept the fact that these books aren't meant to be comedies. It's their darker parts that make them worth reading. I think it's great that Stroud added so much humor to Amulet of Samarkand, but when you think about it, the book really wasn't about humor. Neither is Golem's Eye. While planning the book, Stroud had to sacrifice either some of Bartimaeus's funny lines or some of the story, and luckily he kept the story. Besides, Bartimaeus gets a lot of good lines anyway. If Stroud had worked in more humor, it would have detracted from the story's atmosphere.

Finally, the descriptions themselves are brilliant. From both Bartimaeus's first person and Nathaniel and Kitty's third person narratives, Stroud conveys scenes and emotions with amazing strength. I can't see how anyone can be bored when he writes so wonderfully. Even when the description doesn't seem completely necessary, it adds so much depth that the story would lose some of its power without it.

Basically, don't get mad at Golem's Eye just because reading it takes a little extra patience. If you get over the American action-fever and appreciate the subtler stuff behind the plot, you'll find a fantasy book greater than nearly any other. So few authors go past the shallow "epic battles" and "heroic quests" of the generic fantasy genre. People ought to be glad when they find a book by someone creative enough to go further.

"Picture the scene. London in the rain. Gray sheets of water tumbled from the sky, breaking upon the pavements with a roar louder than cannon fire. A strong wind buffeted the rain this way and that, blowing it under porches and eaves, cornices and capstones, drowning each possible refuge with a freezing spray. There was water everywhere, bouncing off the tarmac, swilling along the gutters, congregating in basement corners and above the drains. It overflowed the city's cisterns. It cascaded horizontally through pipes, diagonally across roof-slates, vertically down walls, staining the brickwork like sweeping washes of blood. It dripped between joists and through cracks in ceilings. It hung in the air in the form of a chill white mist, and above, invisibly, in the black reaches of the sky. It seeped into the fabric of buildings and the bones of their cowering inhabitants.

"In dark places underground, rats huddled in their lairs, listening to the echoes of the drumming overhead. In humble houses, ordinary men and women closed the shutters, turned lights full on and clustered about their hearth-fires with steaming cups of tea. Even in their lonely villas, the magicians fled the endless rain. They skulked to their workrooms, bolted fast the iron doors and, conjuring clouds of warming incense, lost themselves in dreams of distant lands.

"Rats, commoners, magicians: all safely undercover. And who could blame them? The streets were deserted, all London was shut down. It was close to midnight and the storm was getting worse.

"No one in their right mind would be out on a night like this."

But, of course, everyone's favorite wise-ass, shape-shifting djinni is stuck out in the rain. Nathaniel, who is now a few years older, much more arrogant, and now calling himself John Mandrake, has dragged Bartimaeus back to work in London.

It took me quite a while to finally get to work reading THE GOLEM'S EYE.

Bulldozing my way through mountains of books in preparation for the just-concluded Best Books for Young Adults committee meetings in Boston this week, I repeatedly shunted aside this 550+ paged middle volume in Johnathan Stroud's Bartimaeus trilogy. This, despite the fact that the first book (THE AMULET OF SAMARKAND) was my favorite fantasy of 2003. But being responsible for thoroughly reading as many BBYA nominations as possible--and there were 214 nominations this time around--I focused on building up my "Books Read" total and saved Bartimaeus for the final week before the meetings.

It turns out that I saved one of the best for last.

Danger, action, mystery, evil, and humor, (and occasionally a lot of rain) make THE GOLEM'S EYE a fantastic fantasy. But the eloquent vocabulary, vivid and melodic descriptions, significant themes, and Orwellian overtones make this a profound piece of Young Adult literature.

With the publication of THE GOLEM'S EYE, Jonathan Stroud demonstrates emphatically that his name deserves to be spoken in the same breath as J. K. Rowling and Philip Pullman. And in the same way that I don't take anything away from the life-altering experience of first reading the advance copy of the HARRY POTTER AND THE SORCERER'S STONE by contending that HP3 was a better written book than HP1, I take nothing away from the genius of AMULET OF SAMARKAND by noting that Mr. Stroud has thoroughly surpassed his previous effort in writing his second book of the trilogy.

THE GOLEM'S EYE features Kitty Jones, a young commoner who made a brief but memorable appearance in AMULET. Stroud reveals the story of Kitty's recruitment into the Resistance after she and her childhood friend Jakob are thoroughly (and nearly fatally) wronged by a prominent magician in the government. It is the damaged, self-absorbed, and full of himself teenaged Nathaniel who is assigned the task of playing cat-and-mouse with the Resistance when a massive mud man cloaked in a black cloud begins wreaking massive death and destruction amidst several of London's prime tourist destinations.

The political commentary in which Stroud's story is immersed makes this book worthy of in-depth study by high school students, just as the thrilling story on its face will totally suck in younger readers.

One of the most memorable aspects of THE GOLEM'S EYE involve the scenes in which the enslaved Bartimaeus meets and gets to know Kitty, the oppressed commoner. Kitty is changed as a result of their philosophical conversations. (The question is how will Kitty influence Bartimaeus in the third book of the trilogy.) The astute reader will leave the book questioning the use of violence, the means to an end, and how power corrupts.

I almost envy those of you who haven't yet read THE AMULET OF SAMARKAND and have the opportunity to thoroughly immerse yourselves in the first two volumes of Jonathan Stroud's alternative London.

The Golem's Eye is a solidly enjoyable if slightly disappointing follow-up to The Amulet of Samarkand, which admittedly set itself a very high standard. The book returns to the same setting and characters first introduced in Samarkand, while expanding upon the first novel with a few new characters, one new setting (Prague) and a somewhat more complicated plot.

As in the first book, the major story involves a plot against the government which Nathaniel the young ambitious wizard must confront with his much more wise and experienced (and acidic) djinn, Bartimeus. Suspects are the Prague Council, a traitor within the British govt., someone bent on personal revenge, and the Resistance, including young Kitty from book one.

All the strengths of the first book remain, though diluted somewhat in execution. Stroud's world, a modern-day England where demon-summoning, backstabbing wizards rule in luxury over a mostly-complacent lower class and a small minority of rebels, is nicely detailed in touches both large and small. Beside the major plot conflicts, there is a constant undercurrent of tension caused by the larger societal conflicts (magic versus unmagic, upper-class versus lower class, natives versus immigrants), infighting among several groups (the ruling magicians, the smaller Resistance movement), and tangential references to outside conflicts (impending war with America, continuing strain within the empire with regard to conquered areas, especially Prague). Not to mention the inherent hostility between the wizard-rulers and their summoned/captive demons, wonderfully captured in one of my favorite scenes.

The structure, which switches point-of-view among Nathaniel, Kitty, and Bartimeus remains an effective device though for some reason doesn't seem quite so smoothly done as in Samarkand.

Character development is as strong, however, as all three of the major characters--Nathaniel, Kitty, Bartimeus--face several major turning points and personal crises. These are fully fleshed out characters here exhibiting a range of emotions and reactions, a range of traits both positive and negative, all of them believable and realistic. As in book one, Stroud is not afraid to have one of his major characters, Nathaniel, be highly unlikable in places. Kitty is certainly more likable, while Bartimeus remains the most enjoyable.

That last is part of the problem here for he is also the one least present in the book. When he is on the page, he carries the book along swiftly with a bitingly funny narrative voice. When he isn't there, his absence is sometimes strongly felt. Certainly for those who loved Samarkand in large part for the voice of Bartimeus, his lessened presence here is cause for some small disappointment.

The book is also too long; it easily could have lost a hundred or so pages which would have not only sped things along a bit but also would have given Bartimeus proportionately more space.

The plots are interesting and while they are "resolved" so that the book can stand on its own, there are enough unanswered questions that one wants to move right on to the next book in the series. And while each of the major characters develops throughout the book, he/she/it is left still unformed, still in the process of becoming. Wanting to learn how they turn out is an even more compelling lure than the ongoing plot.

Disappointing with respect to its predecessor, but Samarkand was so good it should come as no surprise if Stroud didn't quite match it. As its own book, Golem is still highly enjoyable, though readers will probably wish the parts with Bartimeus were more frequent and the other sections not as long. Still a strong recommendation with a lot of anticipation for the next one.