by Jonathan Stroud
I am giving it Five Stars because:
A. It gave me so much pleasure to re-acquaint with an old favorite, namely, the witty, boastful, and oftentimes powerful, but also self-deprecating and silly Bartimaeus. (A bit like Bruce Willies in Fifth Element.)
B. Stroud manages to present several different angles of the plot line and bring everything together in thrilling culminating sequences.
C. The three main characters: Barti, King Solomon, and Asmira, the young royal guard of the Queen of Sheba, each is layered and real and inspire admiration in very different ways.
D. And I believe that it is a book that many many young readers will find enjoyable….
… among many other reasons — cool magic, interesting twists in the plot, a tinge of melancholy that only a couple-of-thousand-year-old Djinni could experience, etc.
Fairrosa Cyber Library 
I’m very very happy to read this — having just finished (and been blown away by) Ptolemy’s Gate I have been half-worried/half-thrilled about a new Bartimaeus book, hoping it would live up to my expectations. So I am glad to hear good things about it!
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It does not, however, have the same extremely strong emotional turn that makes Ptolemy’s Gate a thoroughly unforgettable story. I don’t think it’s the goal of Stroud, in this new book, to make us readers cry (which I did with Ptolemy’s Gate.) It’s more of a “laugh quite a bit, but think a little” book :)
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Heh, that might be a good thing! I was useless after reading Ptolemy’s Gate (one of the few books to make me teary without invoking sad things happening to dogs). I’m quite happy to laugh a lot and think a little this time.
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