So happens that I am at the Chennai airport waiting to board the flight to Colombo, and S decides to pick up something to read.. I tag along, sternly making up my mind not to buy anything for myself - after all I have my holiday reading already lined up.
But I have this thing about bookshops. If I visit one, I cannot leave without picking up something! I felt guilty about indulging, and so picked up this book with half a heart. I read it in a day and a half and absolutely LOVED it!
I have been meaning to read a fantasy book for a while now. I have this sudden love for the magic, gore and mysticism that this genre offers. 'The Amulet of Samarkand' by Jonathan Stroud did not disappoint.
The first of the Bartimaeus triology, this is the story of Nathaniel, a young, upcoming, emotional and extremely rash apprentice-magician and the djinni Bartimaeus that he summons.
Nathaniel lives with his master and mistress and is bitter towards the attitude his master has to him. The emotion strengthens when Simon Lovelace (a magician-minister who's ambition is to take over the government and will stop at nothing to achieve this) pooh poohs him as a mere child. An angry Nathaniel summons Bartimaeus, a 5,000 year old djinni, to seek his revenge.
The Amulet of Samarkand is a fast-paced, action-packed story with very funny, witty footnotes (I actually had to put down my book at times because I was laughing so much). Jonathan Stroud moves from the second-person narration of Nathaniel's story to Bartimaeus's first-person narration with elegant ease.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Amulet_of_Samarkand
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