The Golem's Eye (Book Two in the Bartimaeus Trilogy) Book Review

The Bartimaeus Trilogy never fails to please the popular genre of Young Adult Fantasy. Its second book, The Bartimaeus Trilogy: The Golem’s Eye, is hardly an exception. The main characters interact with their usual charm (e.g., almost none at all), but they still manage to come together in a way that works. Once again, Stroud creates separate points of entry for his characters in the beginning, each with their own events, but ties everything together for a stunning end. This conclusion contributes to the arc of the trilogy as a whole; the foreshadowing work is seamless and overwhelming in its complexity. This in part is because of the new protagonist addition, Kitty Jones. She introduces new insight to the story on the basis of the commoners vs magicians front. It relates to the more thoughtful theme created of conscience--what it is and how to get rid of it. As always, the footnotes in Bartimaeus’s chapters are both engaging and hilarious. I personally preferred the first book to the second, but when a bar is set that high, surpassing it may be near impossible. Overall, the two books together set themselves up for a series conclusion crazier and more amazing than both combined.

Recommended for anyone who needs a twist on the cliche good vs evil to keep their insanity intact.

-Grace Nask