The Bartimaeus Trilogy, Jonathan Stroud
Jun. 16th, 2023 10:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
phantomtomatoI read all three books of the Bartimaeus Trilogy, by Jonathan Stroud—though I suppose it’s actually a four-book sequence. I skipped the prequel. It didn’t have my fave in it.
To be honest, I’ve been sitting on this writeup for a while, I think because blitzing through three books in a week was unusual for me and made it a little difficult to process all of them. I think, overall, what I would say is: I had fun, I got out of them what I expected, and I probably won’t be reading more YA or fantasy lit any time soon.
Spoilers behind the cut tags.
Each book tackles one major incident in the life of the protagonist, Nathaniel [Underwood]. The first book introduces Nathaniel and Bartimaeus, a djinni/spirit (magicians in this world call them ‘demons’) who Nathaniel summons in order to enact a revenge fantasy. Nathaniel is 12. Bartimaeus is about 5,000. Progressively, the corruption of this world is revealed: that magicians enslave spirits in summoning them, that the government class is made up of magicians who are sick with their need for power, that magicians routinely assassinate each other in order to gain or keep power, that magicians are trained through an apprenticeship program that involves taking them from their birth families and raising them without any connection to that identity (including their own names). It is bleak and miserable, and Nathaniel, who is a child, doesn’t begin to recognize that—he is focused purely on correcting an embarrassment from a year earlier, at the hands of the novel’s big bad, who he only truly begins to realize is a Very Bad Man after he’s already stolen the guy’s precious artifact. Bartimaeus is mainly a wisecracking alternate perspective in this, giving us a sense of how big a deal this magic shit really is when Nathaniel’s perspective is too young/limited to know otherwise.
The second book introduces the third main character, Kitty Jones, so that we can really begin to understand the class politics of the magician/commoner divide. She’s a teenage member of the resistance, two years older than Nathaniel (he’s now 14). This book sees Nathaniel foiling another nefarious power-grab plot, from inside the government now, as he’s a junior something-something in some prestigious office. He is very much a teenager but also very much caught up in the system of government and despite his conscience occasionally making him feel queasy about something, he tends to preserve the state at all costs. Bartimaeus bridges the perspectives between Kitty and Nathaniel a bit, as he provides the opportunity for conversation that cannot (yet) happen directly between their characters.
The third book gives us a 17 year old Nathaniel who has been worn down by a war between his government (the UK) and one of its colonies (America). He’s now a minister in his own right (part of the advising committee to the prime minister) and creates propaganda about enlisting to fight in this war. Bartimaeus has been on Earth for too long a continuous stretch, serving Nathaniel, and is tired and cranky and weak—he’s at his lowest point of distrust in Nathaniel, who has sort of ceased to be an independent person and now acts as an automaton for the government. They foil another power-grab plot (gone awry, though doesn’t every one of them? This one goes more awry) with the help of Kitty. It costs Nathaniel his life, and in that sacrifice, he is redeemed.
So I messagedyletylyf partway into book two and said, I paraphrase, “ughhh I hate this new protagonist (Kitty). She seems to exist just as a contrast to Nathaniel, as someone to be Good. But he’s just a 14 year old kid! Every time he does something bad, and yeah it can be bad, all I think about is that he’s a child and the choices are to do the bad thing or jeopardize his own life. The other magicians would happily have him put to death! They are often actively trying to kill him!”
And then, after a few minutes more complaining: “Oh, I think I’m just angry that this is YA.”
I think it’s interesting that a YA series did grey morality. I think that Nathaniel is earnestly possible to view as a villain. But he’s younger than the students I teach—I really struggle to ascribe full agency and blame to him for the mix of ambition and fear that pushes him to keep aligning himself with an oppressive government. Maybe if I’d read the series when it was released in 03-05, instead of now… ? As it stands, Nathaniel is just too sad and traumatized for me to really view him as carrying intentional malice.
What drew me into the series was the promise that Nathaniel was a repressed British boy dealing with magic beyond his ability to control it. I got that, and I liked it: he is shown to be significantly above his age-level in his control of summoning, but childish in his ends. He wants recognition, praise, and deep down, the affection that he did not get enough of as a boy. A tutor who he admired, Ms. Lutyens, is fired after attempting to protect him from embarrassment/abuse, and his adoptive mother, Mrs. Underwood, is murdered by the big bad of the first novel. His magician master/not really adoptive father, Mr. Underwood, traumatizes him with imps/spirits when he’s only 6 years old, and is by turns abusive and neglectful to him as a child. The repression is definitely there! And it doesn’t get better as he gets older, because he never gains another confidante or carer after Mrs. Underwood’s death. Part of what draws him and Bartimaeus together is stated by Bartimaeus in the third book: Nathaniel must subconsciously see Bartimaeus as one of the only remaining links to his childhood, and despite their contentious master/servant relationship and Nathaniel’s fear of spirits, he develops a sort of trust in Bartimaeus.
What I didn’t expect of the trilogy was the delightful inclusion of two of my favorite tropes: significant names and loyalty. I’ve been calling the main character ‘Nathaniel’ through all of this, and that is his name—privately. Once he turns twelve (so about midway through the first book), he chooses an official public name (John Mandrake). In this world, Names Have Power. A spirit knowing your name allows them to turn your spells against you, and a rival magician could use it so that his spirit servants’ magic is more effective on you? Idk. Honestly we don’t see that part. But: names are a big deal. And Nathaniel’s adoptive mother, Mrs. Underwood, accidentally reveals his to Bartimaeus early on! It’s terrifying for Nathaniel but also the root of why he keeps summoning Bartimaeus through these five years. He can’t trust Bart to serve anyone else. And I think, deeper than that, Bart’s continued lack of harm to Nathaniel despite knowing his name must influence Nathaniel as well.
Together, they build some sort of delicious self-denying loyalty wherein they continually save one another from death but insist that they hate one another at every opportunity. Bartimaeus does not betray Nathaniel’s name. For all of Nathaniel’s threats, we don’t actually see him use magical punishments on Bartimaeus. There’s an undercurrent of genuine connection that’s obscured by all of the hurtful language they exchange but their gestures and actions tell a different story!
That language, by the way, is clever and cute but definitely young. Bartimaeus has an extremely distinct narrative voice (footnotes!) that makes these into a comedy at times. This is often emulated, to varying degrees of success, in fanworks. I enjoy its effect in the originals but it’s not something I feel myself needing beyond that—I think the tone really emphasizes the YA-ness of the novels in a way that I’m not craving for fic, similar to how I don’t want the whimsy of Harry Potter in any of the HP fic that I write.
Ultimately, I really connected with this as a possible fic fandom. The books were fun but I was clearly not their target audience, and I appreciate that the ways they grated on me (My dislike for Kitty; Nathaniel being too young for me to blame) were a result of that mismatch. But, well, that’s suitably inspiring for the sort of what-if divergence that I enjoy writing. I’m playing with that now, and I really do love the potential for a toned-down version of Bartimaeus’ voice, which keeps snark and grandiosity but ages them up. I love the potential of this human/nonhuman ship for its innate conflict: about their shared past, about their respective roles in this world, about the ways they hurt one another. I love the complexity of Nathaniel’s status as a boy-genius and worse for it, and Bartimaeus’ status as an ancient being at once in love with our world and only able to access it through servitude. It’s a fantasy re-imagining of class and status issues, but I adore class and status issues in all their forms, and I am eager to pick these ones apart, at least for one project.
To be honest, I’ve been sitting on this writeup for a while, I think because blitzing through three books in a week was unusual for me and made it a little difficult to process all of them. I think, overall, what I would say is: I had fun, I got out of them what I expected, and I probably won’t be reading more YA or fantasy lit any time soon.
Spoilers behind the cut tags.
Each book tackles one major incident in the life of the protagonist, Nathaniel [Underwood]. The first book introduces Nathaniel and Bartimaeus, a djinni/spirit (magicians in this world call them ‘demons’) who Nathaniel summons in order to enact a revenge fantasy. Nathaniel is 12. Bartimaeus is about 5,000. Progressively, the corruption of this world is revealed: that magicians enslave spirits in summoning them, that the government class is made up of magicians who are sick with their need for power, that magicians routinely assassinate each other in order to gain or keep power, that magicians are trained through an apprenticeship program that involves taking them from their birth families and raising them without any connection to that identity (including their own names). It is bleak and miserable, and Nathaniel, who is a child, doesn’t begin to recognize that—he is focused purely on correcting an embarrassment from a year earlier, at the hands of the novel’s big bad, who he only truly begins to realize is a Very Bad Man after he’s already stolen the guy’s precious artifact. Bartimaeus is mainly a wisecracking alternate perspective in this, giving us a sense of how big a deal this magic shit really is when Nathaniel’s perspective is too young/limited to know otherwise.
The second book introduces the third main character, Kitty Jones, so that we can really begin to understand the class politics of the magician/commoner divide. She’s a teenage member of the resistance, two years older than Nathaniel (he’s now 14). This book sees Nathaniel foiling another nefarious power-grab plot, from inside the government now, as he’s a junior something-something in some prestigious office. He is very much a teenager but also very much caught up in the system of government and despite his conscience occasionally making him feel queasy about something, he tends to preserve the state at all costs. Bartimaeus bridges the perspectives between Kitty and Nathaniel a bit, as he provides the opportunity for conversation that cannot (yet) happen directly between their characters.
The third book gives us a 17 year old Nathaniel who has been worn down by a war between his government (the UK) and one of its colonies (America). He’s now a minister in his own right (part of the advising committee to the prime minister) and creates propaganda about enlisting to fight in this war. Bartimaeus has been on Earth for too long a continuous stretch, serving Nathaniel, and is tired and cranky and weak—he’s at his lowest point of distrust in Nathaniel, who has sort of ceased to be an independent person and now acts as an automaton for the government. They foil another power-grab plot (gone awry, though doesn’t every one of them? This one goes more awry) with the help of Kitty. It costs Nathaniel his life, and in that sacrifice, he is redeemed.
So I messaged
yletylyf partway into book two and said, I paraphrase, “ughhh I hate this new protagonist (Kitty). She seems to exist just as a contrast to Nathaniel, as someone to be Good. But he’s just a 14 year old kid! Every time he does something bad, and yeah it can be bad, all I think about is that he’s a child and the choices are to do the bad thing or jeopardize his own life. The other magicians would happily have him put to death! They are often actively trying to kill him!”And then, after a few minutes more complaining: “Oh, I think I’m just angry that this is YA.”
I think it’s interesting that a YA series did grey morality. I think that Nathaniel is earnestly possible to view as a villain. But he’s younger than the students I teach—I really struggle to ascribe full agency and blame to him for the mix of ambition and fear that pushes him to keep aligning himself with an oppressive government. Maybe if I’d read the series when it was released in 03-05, instead of now… ? As it stands, Nathaniel is just too sad and traumatized for me to really view him as carrying intentional malice.
What drew me into the series was the promise that Nathaniel was a repressed British boy dealing with magic beyond his ability to control it. I got that, and I liked it: he is shown to be significantly above his age-level in his control of summoning, but childish in his ends. He wants recognition, praise, and deep down, the affection that he did not get enough of as a boy. A tutor who he admired, Ms. Lutyens, is fired after attempting to protect him from embarrassment/abuse, and his adoptive mother, Mrs. Underwood, is murdered by the big bad of the first novel. His magician master/not really adoptive father, Mr. Underwood, traumatizes him with imps/spirits when he’s only 6 years old, and is by turns abusive and neglectful to him as a child. The repression is definitely there! And it doesn’t get better as he gets older, because he never gains another confidante or carer after Mrs. Underwood’s death. Part of what draws him and Bartimaeus together is stated by Bartimaeus in the third book: Nathaniel must subconsciously see Bartimaeus as one of the only remaining links to his childhood, and despite their contentious master/servant relationship and Nathaniel’s fear of spirits, he develops a sort of trust in Bartimaeus.
What I didn’t expect of the trilogy was the delightful inclusion of two of my favorite tropes: significant names and loyalty. I’ve been calling the main character ‘Nathaniel’ through all of this, and that is his name—privately. Once he turns twelve (so about midway through the first book), he chooses an official public name (John Mandrake). In this world, Names Have Power. A spirit knowing your name allows them to turn your spells against you, and a rival magician could use it so that his spirit servants’ magic is more effective on you? Idk. Honestly we don’t see that part. But: names are a big deal. And Nathaniel’s adoptive mother, Mrs. Underwood, accidentally reveals his to Bartimaeus early on! It’s terrifying for Nathaniel but also the root of why he keeps summoning Bartimaeus through these five years. He can’t trust Bart to serve anyone else. And I think, deeper than that, Bart’s continued lack of harm to Nathaniel despite knowing his name must influence Nathaniel as well.
Together, they build some sort of delicious self-denying loyalty wherein they continually save one another from death but insist that they hate one another at every opportunity. Bartimaeus does not betray Nathaniel’s name. For all of Nathaniel’s threats, we don’t actually see him use magical punishments on Bartimaeus. There’s an undercurrent of genuine connection that’s obscured by all of the hurtful language they exchange but their gestures and actions tell a different story!
That language, by the way, is clever and cute but definitely young. Bartimaeus has an extremely distinct narrative voice (footnotes!) that makes these into a comedy at times. This is often emulated, to varying degrees of success, in fanworks. I enjoy its effect in the originals but it’s not something I feel myself needing beyond that—I think the tone really emphasizes the YA-ness of the novels in a way that I’m not craving for fic, similar to how I don’t want the whimsy of Harry Potter in any of the HP fic that I write.
Ultimately, I really connected with this as a possible fic fandom. The books were fun but I was clearly not their target audience, and I appreciate that the ways they grated on me (My dislike for Kitty; Nathaniel being too young for me to blame) were a result of that mismatch. But, well, that’s suitably inspiring for the sort of what-if divergence that I enjoy writing. I’m playing with that now, and I really do love the potential for a toned-down version of Bartimaeus’ voice, which keeps snark and grandiosity but ages them up. I love the potential of this human/nonhuman ship for its innate conflict: about their shared past, about their respective roles in this world, about the ways they hurt one another. I love the complexity of Nathaniel’s status as a boy-genius and worse for it, and Bartimaeus’ status as an ancient being at once in love with our world and only able to access it through servitude. It’s a fantasy re-imagining of class and status issues, but I adore class and status issues in all their forms, and I am eager to pick these ones apart, at least for one project.
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Date: 2023-06-20 02:47 pm (UTC)Ha. I feel slightly guilty about noticing the flaws in this series as much as I do, because I think it's actually quite well-written! I'm just not the audience for it at this point in my life (except in wanting to slash two of the leads).