Jonathan Stroud: The Amulet of Samarkand

Reviewed by DAVID LARSEN

There are two words it's absolutely compulsory to use in any review of a new children's fantasy novel, so let's get them out of the way right now: Harry Potter. As good as? Can't compare with? Would never have been published if not for?

Better than. I love J.K. Rowling, and her once-in-a-generation success is a joy to behold, but Jonathan Stroud is more clever, and just as compulsively readable.

The world has for many thousands of years been ruled by warring magicians. A few millennia ago the most powerful and ruthless of them were Egyptian, but they became corrupted by their success, and were overthrown. The global seat of power shifted to Prague.

Power again led to decadence, and after a series of terrible wars, England became the centre of the most powerful magical empire on the planet. English magicians are feared and despised the world over, but the signs suggest they're overdue to follow their Egyptian and Czech predecessors into history's dustbin.

We know all this because we're privy to the thoughts of a cheesed-off demon named Bartimaeus who, having spent most of the past 10,000 years being enslaved by one magician or another, has a keen insight into the workings of history. In this he's different from Nathaniel, the 11-year-old apprentice who's just summoned him.

Nathaniel is under the impression that magicians are noble, righteous men and women, burdened with the ruling of an ungrateful population of tedious peasants. Since a magician took him from his parents at the age of 4 and raised him in isolation from society, this is unsurprising.

What is surprising is that Nathaniel, who in the normal course of events should be just about up to summoning his first imp, has taught himself how to control major demons, and is about to use one - Bartimaeus, in fact - to wage magical war on his master's rivals.

Bartimaeus has a good idea of what's likely to happen to an 11-year-old, however precocious, who tries to wreak havoc on fully trained adult magicians. But Nathaniel doesn't want to be told, and Bartimaeus has no choice but to obey his command and steal the priceless Amulet of Samarkand.

Imagine a cross between an unflappable World War I sergeant following an idiotic young lieutenant into the trenches, and an evil grand vizier hoping for a chance to steal his boy sultan's throne, and you've got Bartimaeus. He's a thoroughly charming old villain. The real star of this book, though, is brilliant, arrogant, deeply clueless Nathaniel.

Even if his half-baked schemes don't get him killed, our not-quite-hero's appalling childhood has left him on the cusp of permanent corruption. He's young enough, and well meaning enough, that the right nudge at the right time might save him. Bartimaeus could supply that nudge ... and Nathaniel could free Bartimaeus. Or they could get each other killed.

This is only the first of three volumes, but by the end of it the most important question has been answered: Stroud is definitely good enough to make us care which way the balance tips.

Doubleday, $29.95