Brilliant heart-wrenching ending for a great series!

books:

	• Ptolemy's Gate (The Bartimaeus Trilogy, Book 3) Jonathan Stroud Disney-Hyperion, 2005 - 512 pages average customer review:based on 146 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Brilliant heart-wrenching ending for a great series!

Oh, this series really dug itself deep into my heart, all because of Nat.

You start out with little Nat living in his insanely-cruel and slanted wizards world, trying to figure out how to gain enough power to control his life and get back at those who have hurt him. You watch him make bad decisions, feel the flutters of conscience and the beginnings of his first friendship all in the first book. You wonder where he will go from there, and then book two takes you further in his journey. But it is not until book three that Nat's personality crystallizes and he becomes all that you hoped and feared he might come to be--a good, brave and selfless wizard whose example changes his world.

Bartimaus, the genii who befriends Nat is a spectacular creation--witty, wise and devilishly clever. A demon, yet an enormously appealing version. I can't explain it. You must read.

Stroud's magic is not only in his characters and their development, but is in his use of language. Here he is in top form, and uses his power to its utmost to take the reader on one of the finest and most satisfying climaxes ever.

Haunting. Powerful. Thrilling. Read this book, but only after reading books one and two.

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Worth Finishing (No Spoilers).

In my opinion, Stroud has not hit a home run with this trilogy. However, if you have read the first two books, you might as well continue. The ending is, at the very least, somewhat interesting (I'll say no more of it).

One of the less successful aspects of this volume is the title phenomenon, involving the journey of one of the characters into the spirit realm. Since this is a region beyond normal human comprehension, it is hardly a fun place for the reader to spend time in. You will probably have some difficulty understanding why Bartimaeus would want to remain indefinitely in such a state.

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A gotta read book !!!!!

Ptolemy's Gate by Jonathan Stroud is a great book about magic and demons that I would recommend to everyone who likes exciting fantasy books.
The action starts in London were John Mandrake the information minister/ magician sends his demon
Bartimaeus to follow a minor magician named Jenkins. Jenkins sees a fly flying around his head, but he dosent know that its really Bartimaeus. Even so he sends his imp a weak subclass of demon out to make shure that nobody is following him. The imp sees Bartimaeus but, Bartimaeus eats the imp and runs away. While following Jenkins he learned of a conspiracy to take over the government. He tells John Mandrake about the conspiracy, and Mandrake works furiously to find the leader of the conspirators, but little does he know that the leader has been a friend of his for a long time...
Bartimaeus a middle ranking demon of about 500 years old is a cheeky and annoying demon who is angry about having to stay in a material world. Staying in a material world for long periods of time weakends the demons, and Bartimaeus has been in the world for a long time. Also silver, iron, and gas affects their essence and weakens them. Bartimaeus is a genie a powerful subclass of demon that has fought many wars and overseen many castles and pyramids being built. Bartimaeus is a cool character and my favorite one in the book.
All in all this is a really good book about magic, demons and politics and I suggest that you read it.

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A satisfying conclusion to an exciting trilogy

"Ptolemy's Gate", the final novel of The Bartimaeus Trilogy - introduced in "The Amulet of Samarkand" and continued with "The Golem's Eye" - completes the tale of John Mandrake, the magician and now Information Minister in the corrupt government of a downtrodden, dystopian England. The dominant theme of "The Golem's Eye" - the corrupting influences of power, ambition and greed - left the reader mourning a flawed Mandrake's fall from grace and wondering whether he could find the moral strength and intestinal fortitude to re-assert himself as the fine young man left far behind in "The Amulet of Samarkand". His one-time resistance foe, Kitty Jones, narrowly escaped from her encounter with the Golem three years earlier, has slipped under the radar entirely and is quietly learning the craft of magic herself. Bartimaeus, the witty motor-mouth djinni, is feeling weak, wan, sickly and near death as his essence or spirit has badly deteriorated as a result of his almost non-stop presence in the human's world subservient to his summoner, John Mandrake.

If "The Amulet of Samarkand" was a light-hearted, childlike (and definitely hilarious) romp through Mandrake's early education as a young magician and if "The Golem's Eye" was a richer, more gothic telling of Mandrake's succumbing to the siren calls of power, corruption and wealth as a member of England's ruling government, then "Ptolemy's Gate" is certainly the darkest of the three novels. Mandrake, Kitty and Bartimaeus, each with their own ambitions and motives, are all on a desperate life-or-death hunt for the perpetrators of a coup that threatens to topple the government and throw their world into a dark demon-ruled chaos.

In "Ptolemy's Gate", Stroud has treated us to a much more sophisticated, adult examination of motives such as cruelty and selfishness along with their mirror images, kindness and altruistic selflessness. The ending feels good, warm, cozy and satisfying in a way that is not entirely unexpected for a young adult novel but Stroud has also added the much more adult elements of sadness, death and loss.

Despite this darker approach to the story than its predecessor, readers need not worry that Stroud has lost his flair for comedy. Footnotes, while not quite as plentiful as in the first two novels, are still a veritable fountain of wit. They also introduce the character of Ptolemy and take us 5000 years into the past to build the character of Bartimaeus and provide the readers with an understanding of what it means to be a djinni painfully subservient to the beck and call of a summoning magician.

A highly recommended addition to the bookshelves of fantasy lovers and young adult readers.

Paul Weiss

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Oh how I wish it wasn't over!!

I started reading the Bartimaeus trilogy shortly after finishing Harry Potter book 6 just to fill the void of waiting for the last HP book. I must say I feel very fortunate to have stumbled across these books, they are a great read. Very much in the same vein as HP but different enough to not feel like a clone. So many takes on the story have been written already so you know the gist of the book. All I can say is this is a superb ending to the trilogy, I am in no way disappointed. It was well worth the time to read all three and has made time fly while waiting for the last HP book. I just hope, as others have stated, that he plans for more books within the same realm and with some returning characters b/c the way the trilogy ended that option is available.

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reviews: 1, 2, 3, page 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13

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