Author – Jonathan Stroud
Publisher – Corgi Books, Random House Children’s Books
First published – 2010
Rating – Excellent
Shortlisted for the 2010 COSTA Children’s Book
Award, this book is one of the best Fantasy novels I’ve ever read. It’s got an evil king with a magic ring,
scores of magical creatures and evil magicians at his command, a maiden - a queen
none the less in distress, a devoted servant and a mischievous jinni.
History lessons go awry when one realizes that the evil king
is none other than Solomon of Palestine. That same Solomon the wise who wrote
the beautiful songs to God. Here he is the powerful king who rules with terror.
Terror which he can infuse in the greatest of magicians with a twirl of his
ring. Because this ring is the portal between Earth and the spirit world. And
the master of the ring is the master of the spirits. So while a decent magician
may have 4 or 5 spirits at his service and an excellent one a couple of dozen,
King Solomon has an entire army.
Bartimaeus, or Barty as he called by the spirits in lighter
moments, is a djinn and a slave of on of King Solomon’s court magicians –
Khaba the cruel. The magicians enslave the spirits though incantations and bind
them to do their will. The spirits have amazing powers and can build temples, pyramids, forts, canals, roads etc in weeks with their magic. However the spirits are
dangerous slaves. They hate their captivity and look for the slightest mistake
from the magician to devour him or any other human for that matter. Nothing
stops them from making the most of life in the meantime – making merry,
bantering, fighting etc. even in their
slavery.
Now King Solomon is enamored by the Queen of Sheeba.
However, things turn nasty when with his fourth proposal, he also sends a
threat. Sheeba should accept King Solomon as it’s sovereign and send Palestine
royalty in frankincense or else face the wrath of it’s king. A small nation,
Sheeba does not have the means to defend itself. In a desperate bid, the queen
sends her personal bodyguard to assassinate the king.
The bodyguard is a chit of a seventeen year old girl! A girl
with uncompromising fealty to her queen and a youthful straightness of purpose
which does not cause her to pause and question her queen’s orders – that she be
too young, inexperienced, with no magical abilities to go on such a dangerous rendezvous. She is a wide eyed girl filled with thrill at
her queen’s confidence on her.
With sheer luck and foolhardy courage, the girl Asmira
overcomes some low ranking spirits on the highway and meets Barty – who was
patrolling the highway at that moment. Her shoddy alias story, request to be taken
to King Solomon and skill with the knife made Bartimaeus hesitate and he does not
eat her as he was wont to.
Through twists of destiny and Asmira’s pluck Barty finds
himself her slave on the diehard mission to kill the king and steal the ring. Disobeying
a master would mean the spirit would have to face the deep hole for all
eternity. So against his better judgement Bartimaeus complies. The resourceful
Bartimaeus reaches Asmira to the King’s chamber.
And there they discover the secret of the ring. The ring
feeds of its master. King Solomon is thus and old man much before his time. The
king understands the cruel power of the ring and seeks to use it
sparingly. Asmira learns that it was
Khaba who had sent the subordination message to her queen. King Solomon was
unaware of such a message.
Asmira realises that the king is not evil and is unable to
assassinate as per her orders. She however takes the ring which is given
without resistance by Solomon for her Queen. However Khaba intercedes her.
Unable to get herself to wield the power of the ring, she unwittingly lets the
ring go into Khaba’s hands. Khaba unleashes the power of the ring for personal
power. He wants to destroy Palestine and establish the seat of power at Egypt
once more. Asmira sees the destruction
the ring can bring in the wrong hands. She appreciates that Solomon had
curtailed the power of the ring and used it mostly for good.
A last attempt ensues in which Asmira retrieves the ring
from Khaba and returns it to King Solomon. King Solomon takes the weight of ring
again on his wise shoulders.
For Asmira however, the world has turned upside down – Her
Queen is not infallible, in fact she is selfish and foolish, unable to
appreciate the service given to her. She
discovers her ingrained sense of duty to the queen made her a slave just like
Bartimaeus. However unlike Bartimaeus her chains were so doused in a sense of
duty and patriotism that she did not recognize her servility.
And Bartimaeus is free at last. Until someone else manages
to snare him into his pentagram.
