by Jonathan Stroud
ages: 12+
First sentence: “Sunset above the olive groves.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!

Ah, Bartimaeus. I’ve missed you.

I’ve missed your snarky footnotes, your adventures, your soft spot for humans, your insights. I could go back and read the other three books, true, but I’m so happy to have you back in a new story.

Stroud re-imagines Solomon and his reign in Jerusalem, using the same world of magicians and spirits he created for the previous Bartimaeus books. The basic idea is this: what if Solomon had a ring, something which accesses magic more terrible, more powerful than any other magician. This allows him to create peace and prosperity. However, he also employs magicians, some of which are not too nice. It’s one of these that summons Bartimaeus and keeps him in servitude. Of course, Bartimaeus being Bartimaeus, he tends to get into trouble a lot. As a punishment, he’s off in the desert cleaning up bandits. Which is where he meets Asmira.

She’s not any ordinary girl, but one of the personal guards of the Queen of Sheba. Sent to Jerusalem on a quest to assassinate Solomon and steal the ring, she’s fairly single minded in her quest. She falls in with Bartimaeus and between the two of them, they attempt the impossible.

It’s a great book for the same reason the rest of the trilogy is great. It’s as fabulously imagined world, and Baritmaeus is a grand character. There’s action and adventure, loathesome bad guys, and an undercurrent of intriguing and deep ideas to think about. It falls apart a bit at the end, but, mostly it lives up to the reputation of the Bartimaeus books.

And you can’t beat that.