After the success of the “Harry Potter” novels, book shelves have been filled with novels about whites and wizards, unfortunately more of them aren’t worth reading. But there are a few that are better than worth reading, some of them are worth reviewing.The first thing I noticed about this book was its original take on the “wizard genre”. In this alternate reality, witches and wizards are not powerful themselves, there power lies in there ability to summon and command demons of different levels. But there is a catch, if the summoning is done incorrectly or the demon is too powerful for the “summoner” to control, the demon may end up killing the “summoner”.
The second piece of originality I detected was that in this alternate world, society is ran by wizards and witches - they are the upper class. Where as in “Harry Potter” the beings of magic are hidden from the general population.
There are 5 main levels for demons, in order of increasing strength are: imps, foliots, djinni, afrits and marids.
This story follows a 12 year old apprentice named Nathaniel, who secretly summons the notorious djinni Bartimaeus, before he should even be able to summon even an imp. Bartimaeus is sent to steal a mysterious amulet, that’s when the problem starts.
The story switches perspectives between the often immature Nathaniel, and the 5000 year old Bartimaeus.
Bartimaeus truly stands out, being powerful, funny, cynical, intelligent and wise. Where as I found Nathaniel to be quite boring, and annoying at times.
Over all, this book is a great page turner. To be honest, I enjoyed this more than the philosopher’s stone, probably because this story is darker and more mature, but maybe, just maybe, it’s because this book is actually better. I recommend this novel to readers 13 and above. I give it a 4.5/5
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