Some backlog catchup, here. I’d read Jonathan Stroud’s The Amulet of Samarkand because I was interested in the audiobooks narrated by Simon Jones. A year and a half later, I finally got around to the rest of the series, The Golem’s Eye and Ptolemy’s Gate.
I listened to The Golem’s Eye, and though Jones does a fine job, I didn’t find the book well-suited to the audio format. As the first book provided Nathaniel’s backstory, so this book provides Kitty’s backstory. And I like her, but her backstory is slow, anvilicious, and copious, or at least feels that way out loud.
The book does have good action sequences and Bartimaeus remains entertaining (though the combination of his first-person narration and the omniscient of the rest of the series is a bit odd), so I went on to read the concluding volume, Ptolemy’s Gate. This had the virtues of the prior books, with the bonus of Bartimaeus’s backstory. I was, however, dissatisfied with the ending, which resolved less than the series had promised—and in a manner that suggested I wasn’t supposed to notice. Yes, problems are easy and solutions are hard; but if you can’t solve a problem, at least don’t try to disguise your inability with sleight-of-hand.