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Content snapshot
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Violence
Some
Magical combat; some threat and danger; a political assassination conspiracy
Language
None
No profanity; some dry Bartimaeus wit
Sexual Content
None
No sexual content
Substance Use
None
No substance use
Emotional Intensity
Barely any
Some menace from the adult magical establishment; the stakes are genuinely serious by the end
What this book is about
Nathaniel, twelve, a magician's apprentice in an alternate London where sorcerers rule, summons the three-thousand-year-old djinni Bartimaeus to steal the Amulet of Samarkand from the powerful Simon Lovelace. Bartimaeus is acerbic, dangerous, and deeply unimpressed. Together they stumble into a conspiracy that threatens the British government's magical establishment. Stroud's Bartimaeus Trilogy opens with one of the sharpest, funniest first-person narrators in YA fantasy—a djinni who has served everyone from Solomon to Ptolemy and hasn't mellowed with age.
Notes for sensitive readers
Reader-flagged moments and themes that may affect your experience.
Magical combat and political conspiracy
Genuine menace from adult antagonists
Reader Verification
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