The Amulet of Samarkand
In an alternative London where a class of aloof magicians rules Britain by summoning demons they call to the letter of the contract, twelve-year-old Nathaniel is the apprentice of a mediocre government minister and has just been publicly humiliated by the political rival Simon Lovelace. He responds by illegally summoning, alone and years before any apprentice should, a five-thousand-year-old djinni named Bartimaeus, and orders him to steal the powerful Amulet of Samarkand from Lovelace's house. Bartimaeus narrates his own chapters in weary, self-interested first person, full of contemptuous footnotes about the kind of wizard who gets himself enslaved, and Nathaniel narrates his in tighter third person. Jonathan Stroud's 2003 trilogy opener became a staple of middle-grade and crossover fantasy.
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First in the Bartimaeus trilogy. In an alt-London ruled by magicians, twelve-year-old Nathaniel summons the ancient djinn Bartimaeus to steal a powerful amulet from a more senior, very nasty magician.
Jonathan Stroud's Bartimaeus Sequence has four books: The Amulet of Samarkand, The Golem's Eye, Ptolemy's Gate, and the prequel The Ring of Solomon. The series is complete.
The Amulet of Samarkand is middle grade and YA crossover, recommended for readers 11 and up. The dual narrator (the snarky djinni Bartimaeus and the apprentice Nathaniel) appeals across age ranges.
The Amulet of Samarkand was written by Jonathan Stroud, published in 2003 by Hyperion Books.
The Amulet of Samarkand is 462 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, The Amulet of Samarkand takes most readers 7 to 10 hours to finish.
The Amulet of Samarkand is a standalone novel by Jonathan Stroud, not part of a series.
The Amulet of Samarkand is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.