Picture the scene. London in the rain. Gray sheets of water tumbled from the sky, breaking upon the pavements with a roar louder than cannon fire. A strong wind buffeted the rain this way and that, blowing it under porches and eaves, cornices and capstones, drowning each possible refuge with a freezing spray. There was water everywhere, bouncing off the tarmac, swilling along the gutters, congregating in basement corners and above the drains. It overflowed the city's cisterns. It cascaded horizontally through pipes, diagonally across roof-slates, vertically down walls, staining the brickwork like sweeping washes of blood. It dripped between joists and through cracks in ceilings. It hung in the air in the form of a chill white mist, and above, invisibly, in the black reaches of the sky. It seeped into the fabric of buildings and the bones of their cowering inhabitants.
"In dark places underground, rats huddled in their lairs, listening to the echoes of the drumming overhead. In humble houses, ordinary men and women closed the shutters, turned lights full on and clustered about their hearth-fires with steaming cups of tea. Even in their lonely villas, the magicians fled the endless rain. They skulked to their workrooms, bolted fast the iron doors and, conjuring clouds of warming incense, lost themselves in dreams of distant lands.
"Rats, commoners, magicians: all safely undercover. And who could blame them? The streets were deserted, all London was shut down. It was close to midnight and the storm was getting worse.
"In dark places underground, rats huddled in their lairs, listening to the echoes of the drumming overhead. In humble houses, ordinary men and women closed the shutters, turned lights full on and clustered about their hearth-fires with steaming cups of tea. Even in their lonely villas, the magicians fled the endless rain. They skulked to their workrooms, bolted fast the iron doors and, conjuring clouds of warming incense, lost themselves in dreams of distant lands.
"Rats, commoners, magicians: all safely undercover. And who could blame them? The streets were deserted, all London was shut down. It was close to midnight and the storm was getting worse.
"No one in their right mind would be out on a night like this."
But, of course, everyone's favorite wise-ass, shape-shifting djinni is stuck out in the rain. Nathaniel, who is now a few years older, much more arrogant, and now calling himself John Mandrake, has dragged Bartimaeus back to work in London.
It took me quite a while to finally get to work reading THE GOLEM'S EYE.
Bulldozing my way through mountains of books in preparation for the just-concluded Best Books for Young Adults committee meetings in Boston this week, I repeatedly shunted aside this 550+ paged middle volume in Johnathan Stroud's Bartimaeus trilogy. This, despite the fact that the first book (THE AMULET OF SAMARKAND) was my favorite fantasy of 2003. But being responsible for thoroughly reading as many BBYA nominations as possible--and there were 214 nominations this time around--I focused on building up my "Books Read" total and saved Bartimaeus for the final week before the meetings.
It turns out that I saved one of the best for last.
Danger, action, mystery, evil, and humor, (and occasionally a lot of rain) make THE GOLEM'S EYE a fantastic fantasy. But the eloquent vocabulary, vivid and melodic descriptions, significant themes, and Orwellian overtones make this a profound piece of Young Adult literature.
With the publication of THE GOLEM'S EYE, Jonathan Stroud demonstrates emphatically that his name deserves to be spoken in the same breath as J. K. Rowling and Philip Pullman. And in the same way that I don't take anything away from the life-altering experience of first reading the advance copy of the HARRY POTTER AND THE SORCERER'S STONE by contending that HP3 was a better written book than HP1, I take nothing away from the genius of AMULET OF SAMARKAND by noting that Mr. Stroud has thoroughly surpassed his previous effort in writing his second book of the trilogy.
THE GOLEM'S EYE features Kitty Jones, a young commoner who made a brief but memorable appearance in AMULET. Stroud reveals the story of Kitty's recruitment into the Resistance after she and her childhood friend Jakob are thoroughly (and nearly fatally) wronged by a prominent magician in the government. It is the damaged, self-absorbed, and full of himself teenaged Nathaniel who is assigned the task of playing cat-and-mouse with the Resistance when a massive mud man cloaked in a black cloud begins wreaking massive death and destruction amidst several of London's prime tourist destinations.
The political commentary in which Stroud's story is immersed makes this book worthy of in-depth study by high school students, just as the thrilling story on its face will totally suck in younger readers.
One of the most memorable aspects of THE GOLEM'S EYE involve the scenes in which the enslaved Bartimaeus meets and gets to know Kitty, the oppressed commoner. Kitty is changed as a result of their philosophical conversations. (The question is how will Kitty influence Bartimaeus in the third book of the trilogy.) The astute reader will leave the book questioning the use of violence, the means to an end, and how power corrupts.
I almost envy those of you who haven't yet read THE AMULET OF SAMARKAND and have the opportunity to thoroughly immerse yourselves in the first two volumes of Jonathan Stroud's alternative London.
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