Review: The Amulet of Samarkand

The Amulet of Samarkand by Jonathan Stroud
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Despite an interesting premise, I found this book rather dry and boring. I never got invested in Nathaniel's story, which makes a huge portion of this book irrelevant. Part of it is that his attitude and actions make him unlikeable. Maybe that is supposed to be balanced out by the personalities of those around him. It didn't work for me in any case. The boy wizard trope is fine. Maybe there just needed to be more of a child in Nathaniel's character.

Bartimaeus, the demon that Nathaniel summons early in the book, is very interesting. He had the most personality in the book and kept it from being a total snooze fest. I particularly like the asides that he gives, which show up in the book as footnotes. The kindle version did a great job presenting these and making it seamless to switch between the main story and these asides. They aren't necessary, but go a long way toward defining the character of Bartimaeus.

I might have rated this a little higher. However, the digital version was riddled with spelling and grammar mistakes. I'm not sure how this compares to the physical version of the book though. Every time I notice something like that it pulls me out of the story. Usually, I try to be pretty forgiving when it comes to those types of mistakes. There were just too many for me to give this book a pass in that regard. As much as I liked Bartimaeus, I don't think I would pick up the next book in this series.

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