Ptolemy's Gate

"Ptolemy’s Gate", is the third and final book in the "Bartimaeus Trilogy" by Jonathan Stroud. With this final book, the trilogy comes to an end in excitement, adventure and an unexpected turn towards tenderness and true values.

A little background: Nathaniel (known as John Mandrake) helped saved the ministry twice, once from Lovelace & Ramuthra and next from the marauding Golem. He is now an established member in the British government. He had let Kitty Hawk (from resistance) scott free. The resistance has been dismantled.

Plot:

Things were not looking good for British Government. Foreign wars are going badly. Many commoners are unhappy with the current government, and rebellion is fermenting among them. Nathaniel is friendless and constantly watched by enemies. He has become merciless and treats everyone cruelly, especially Bartimaeus.

Kitty Hawk finds a job with a retired magician as his helper. She ponders on the reason on why humans and spirits are locked in endless struggle. She understands that humans (magicians) summons spirits and make them slaves; they fear spirits and consider them dangerous. So they keep them in shackles and as slaves and never treat them as equals.

Bartimaeus had told her that his greatest master, Ptolemy, was the only human who treated his servants as equals. Ptolemy falsely believed that other people would follow his footsteps. Ptolemy trusted Bartimaeus and even crossed over to the “Other Place” with Bartimaeus and came back alive. The “Other Place” is where spirits dwell.

Kitty’s aim to learn some magic as to summon Bartimaeus and travel to “Other Place”. After putting some effort, she succeeds and travel to “Other Place” with Bartimaeus, the only person other than Ptolemy to do that. Thus earning full trust from Bartimaeus.

Farquarl (a Djinn mentioned in “The Amulet of Samarkand”) and his friends (spirits) are plotting to destroy the magicians and take over the human world. Their plan is to lure magicians to share their bodies to spirits for promises of greater power. Once inside magician’s bodies, they can take full control of their body and mind and then rule the world. Farquarl and Nouda (an entity of greater power than Madrid) manage to enter into human bodies (magicians) and starts unleashing havoc. Soon they create an army of hybrids (spirits & humans). Nathaniel escapes and decides to destroy Nouda. It can be done only if he wielded the Gladstone’s staff, but he doesn’t have the power to wield and use the Gladstone’s staff.

Nathaniel and kitty decides that only if Nathaniel and Bartimaeus combines, together they can wield and use the power of Gladstone’s staff to destroy Nouda and his hybrid army. Bartimaues agrees, even when he suspects that he too will get destroyed in the attack. Finally they combine, sets out to destroy Nouda.

Do they finally defeat Nouda and his army of hybrids, and rescue the world? Does Nathaniel and Bartimaeus survive the attack? That’s the suspense, you get to uncover by reading the book.

Ptolemy’s Gate is an excellent ending to the “Bartimaeus Series”. It’s a brilliant story, with unexpected twists and turns in plot. A must read.

The Golem's Eye

"The Golem’s Eye", is the second book in the "Bartimaeus Trilogy" series by Jonathan Stroud.

It is an excellent sequel to the first book in the series, “The Amulet of Samarkand”. If you have not read “The Amulet of Samarkand”, I strongly recommend you get a hold of that one before reading “The Golem’s Eye”, or you will miss a lot of background. You can read my blog about “The Amulet of Samarkand” here.

The story begins two years after the events of “The Amulet of Samarkand”. Nathaniel is apprenticed to the Minister of Security – Jessica Whitwell, he is also working as an understudy to the Minister of Internal Affairs – Julius Tallow. Nathaniel is fourteen years old, a complete magician and now a government official. Now he is known as “John Mandrake”.(do you remember Mandrake, the magician ;-)

London is rocked by small attacks by a group of rebels called “The Resistance”. Nathaniel is investigating the case. He knows three names – Kitty, Fred, and Stanley from a previous encounter in “The Amulet of Samarkand”, when they stole his scurying glass. He tries find them but to no avail.

“The Resistance” consists of magic resistant commoners. They are immune to most of the magical attacks and can see through illusions created by Djinns. Bartimaeus thinks this might be because too much of magic is flowing in and around London for centuries, and some of the newborns are born with natural resistance to magic. These people who hated magicians have grouped together for a common cause ie. downfall of magicians. Currently, the main activity of “The Resistance” is to rob the houses and establishment of magicians and collect the magical items as much as possible. Their leader is studying the use of these magical items, and their ultimate aim is to use them against the magicians.

Soon there were different type of attacks in large scale, properties destroyed. Anyone including spirits, who are near the incident is being killed. The attacker is always concealed in a mist. The government suspects “The Resistance” for these activities and is getting restless. The Prime Minister orders Nathaniel to put a stop to “The Resistance”. Nathaniel suspects “The Resistance” capability to launch such destruction. After several failed attempts to summon other spirits, he summons Bartimaeus again and charges him find the unknown attacker.

[Since Bartimaeus knows Nathaniel’s birthname, he could have easily destroyed Nathaniel …. Don’t know why he doesn’t do so. Maybe that’s why it worked in a smooth partnership, with both having equal power over other.]

Bartimaues joins with his old friend Queezle, and hunts for the mysterious attacker. Queezle meets the attacker and gets killed by it. Bartimaues arrives too late, gets nearly killed by it, but was able to remove the concealing mist surrounding the attacker. Bartimaues informs the government that it was a golem who attacked. Soon Nathaniel is sent to Prague to find out the secret of Golem.

Meanwhile “The Resistance” plans to raid Gladstone’s tomb and take valuable magical artifacts. They were secretly assisted by a mysterious informant on how to evade the magical security put in place, provided they give him the Gladstone’s staff. Gladstone was the first magician Prime Minster of England and was a very powerful magician. He had single handedly won many wars for England. As they loot the tomb, a ninth-level afrit named Honorious appears who is trapped inside the Gladstone’s bones. Honorious kills most of the members using a sword, but kitty escapes with Gladstone’s staff. The Gladstone’s staff is the most powerful artifact in the tomb, but unknown to Kitty. Kitty goes into hiding, not knowing how many members are left alive.

Nathaniel travels to Prague and finds out magician Kavka, who knows the secret of Golem. The Golem is actually a clay beast, with a magical animation manuscript inserted in its mouth, and it can be controlled using a golem’s eye. Kavka destroys the manuscript he was creating for the unknown person and dies in the resulting explosion. Nathaniel returns back to England, failing to get the info on who’s controlling the golem.

Meanwhile Honorious inside the Gladstone’s skeleton started terrorizing London. Nathaniel asks Bartimaeus to take care of Honorious. Bartimaeus manages to drown Honorious in Thames. Nathaniel decides to acquire the Gladstone’s staff from Kitty to destroy the golem, forces Kitty to come to a secret location, by kidnapping her friend Jacob. Kitty Jones arrives, but gets attacked by the night police, Nathaniel angry at the night police intervention, orders Bartimaeus to rescue Kitty.

Bartimaeus rescues Kitty and hid in an old abandoned building, the one in which Bartimaeus and Nathaniel takes refuge in the “The Amulet of Samarkand”. Bartimaeus and Kitty have an interesting conversation, they discuss about magicians and spirits and their endless struggles. This changes Kitty’s views on spirits and she decides to know more about spirits and their realm.

Kitty and her friend Jacob, take Nathaniel to cellar where the staff is hidden. Suddenly, Honorious appears there and attacks (as he is trying to recover all the stolen artifacts of Gladstone). During the mayhem, the Golem also appears there. Honorious attacks the Golem headlong and but gets destroyed by the Golem. Nathaniel tries to use the staff against Golem, but Nathaniel is not strong enough to wield the staff and fails, and gets knocked unconscious. Kitty and Jacob were about to flee, but Kitty then decides to help Nathaniel, when she sees the Golem turning to attack Nathaniel. Kitty boldly climbs over Golem and snatches the magical parchment from its mouth, which destroys the Golem. Then Kitty and Jacob flees the scene.

The Golem when destroyed goes back to the master who’s controlling him. Nathaniel gets up and follows Golem. Golem returns to Henry Duvall, the Chief of Night Police. Henry is arrested, but tries to escape prison and gets killed a few days later. The person behind Henry Duval remains a mystery to Nathaniel.

Kitty Jones has been given more importance in this novel. Her background is explained, and how she starts to hate magicians and spirits. But her conversation with Bartimaeus, brings her closer to understand the spirit world, changes her perception towards spirits. Kitty, herself did leave a small bit of influence on Bartimaues. Bartimaues also explains her, how he once liked Ptolemy and how Ptolemy trusted him and even traveled with him to spirit world and returned.

The novel retains all the strength’s of the “Bartimaues trilogy – Book 1”, and a must read if you liked "The Amulet of Samarkand". The sequel to this book is “Ptolemy’s Gate”, the final book in The Bartimaues trilogy.