The Amulet of Samarkand
core novel 2003 The Bartimaeus Sequence
Record
| First published | 2003 |
|---|---|
| Original language |  EN |
| Work type | novel |
| Canon status | core |
| Reader rating | 4.04 (136,632 ratings, collected 2026-09-14) |
| Page count | 462 |
| First-edition ISBN | 9780786818594 |
| Internal chronology | 4 |
Synopsis
The Amulet of Samarkand, published in 2003, opens the Bartimaeus Sequence in an alternate-history London ruled by magicians, where ordinary commoners hold no power. Nathaniel, a young apprentice magician still learning his craft, summons the ancient djinni Bartimaeus and commands him to steal the powerful Amulet of Samarkand from Simon Lovelace, a ruthless and ambitious master magician. The theft is meant as an act of revenge against Lovelace for a humiliation Nathaniel suffered earlier, but the amulet proves to be tied to a far larger scheme: Lovelace is plotting to seize control of the government itself. Told partly through Bartimaeus's sardonic first-person narration and partly through Nathaniel's perspective, the book follows the uneasy master-servant relationship between boy and djinni as they are drawn into a conspiracy neither fully understands at the outset.
Where it sits
- Universe: The Bartimaeus Sequence
- Series: The Bartimaeus Sequence core; position 1 of 4 in the series' recorded order
- Author: Jonathan Stroud
Notes
- From the series record (The Bartimaeus Sequence): Core = the original trilogy (The Amulet of Samarkand 2003, The Golem's Eye 2004, Ptolemy's Gate 2005) plus The Ring of Solomon (2010), a full prequel novel set ~2,900 years earlier during King Solomon's reign and marketed as part of the same Sequence -- treated as Core by the same prequel-is-still-Core logic as The Chronicles of Damar's Hero and the Crown, not as separately-tiered companion material. internal chronology values reflect in-story order (Ring of Solomon first), not publication order. Registered as a quartet (4 books, closed set, no further Bartimaeus novels published or announced since 2010).
Neighbouring works
Publication order and internal chronology are tracked as two separate orderings and are never conflated: a book's place in one says nothing about its place in the other.
- Publication order, within the series The Bartimaeus Sequence: position 1 of 4: next The Golem's Eye (2004)
- Internal chronology, within The Bartimaeus Sequence: position 2 of 4: previous The Ring of Solomon (2010) · next The Golem's Eye (2004)
Sources
← The Bartimaeus Sequence dossier · All universes
Part of the Library. Fields without an identified source are omitted, never guessed.