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A review by sasha_reads_books
The Golem's Eye by Jonathan Stroud
2.0
Being only a moderate fan of the first entry in the Bartimaeus Trilogy, I had my reservations about diving into the second book. Unfortunately, my reservations turned prophetic shortly after beginning my read.
So, the biggest problem I had with The Amulet of Samarkand was that the pacing was sub-par at best and The Golem's Eye failed to resolve this issue for me. In fact, I believe that the pacing is worse off in this entry. Stroud did away with a significant amount of the flow destroying footnotes, reducing them to roughly a third the book's chapters rather than the previous half. Despite this, adding in a third character's perspective proved the downfall this time. While Kitty's chapters were interesting in and of themselves, it's only until late in the book that they tie in to the main story close enough to provide intrigue, but by then it was too late to find myself caring about them.
In regards to the characters, which were one of the biggest standouts for me in the first book, unfortunately this too suffered in this entry. Stroud provided hefty amounts of world-building this time around and, thankfully, most of it was done outside of footnotes. Unfortunately, the world Stroud was building up was one of massive intolerance and had explicit "Racist" tones throughout the book. The reason I put this in quotes is because it's not a single or even multiple races that were being constantly tread upon within this book, but the idea of Magicians vs Commoners (those without magical aptitude). Now, that's a common thread in many fantasy worlds for magic users to be strong within a society, but the level and sheer amount of it sickened me on many occasions. It is to be understood that the story could not exist in its current form if it weren't for these ideologies, but during my two sessions reading this book, I found it quite laborious to have to wade through how nasty it got sometimes.
In terms of the story, it was decent, just as the first one's was. I was both surprised and glad that Stroud included some of the roots of golem mythos in the story. Unfortunately, as far as the plot was concerned, there were some gaps that I felt should have been further explored. Perhaps these gaps will be filled in the third book, but in some of the cases, like with the mystery behind Kitty's inherent resiliency towards magic, I would've really preferred it to have been answered in this book as it played a key role all throughout the adventure.
Unfortunately, poor pacing, characters, and a plot full of holes brings my rating of this book down to a two out of five. There was definitely good elements within this book, but the bad outweighed them by just enough for me to not recommend The Golem's Eye to any but the fans of the first book.
So, the biggest problem I had with The Amulet of Samarkand was that the pacing was sub-par at best and The Golem's Eye failed to resolve this issue for me. In fact, I believe that the pacing is worse off in this entry. Stroud did away with a significant amount of the flow destroying footnotes, reducing them to roughly a third the book's chapters rather than the previous half. Despite this, adding in a third character's perspective proved the downfall this time. While Kitty's chapters were interesting in and of themselves, it's only until late in the book that they tie in to the main story close enough to provide intrigue, but by then it was too late to find myself caring about them.
In regards to the characters, which were one of the biggest standouts for me in the first book, unfortunately this too suffered in this entry. Stroud provided hefty amounts of world-building this time around and, thankfully, most of it was done outside of footnotes. Unfortunately, the world Stroud was building up was one of massive intolerance and had explicit "Racist" tones throughout the book. The reason I put this in quotes is because it's not a single or even multiple races that were being constantly tread upon within this book, but the idea of Magicians vs Commoners (those without magical aptitude). Now, that's a common thread in many fantasy worlds for magic users to be strong within a society, but the level and sheer amount of it sickened me on many occasions. It is to be understood that the story could not exist in its current form if it weren't for these ideologies, but during my two sessions reading this book, I found it quite laborious to have to wade through how nasty it got sometimes.
In terms of the story, it was decent, just as the first one's was. I was both surprised and glad that Stroud included some of the roots of golem mythos in the story. Unfortunately, as far as the plot was concerned, there were some gaps that I felt should have been further explored. Perhaps these gaps will be filled in the third book, but in some of the cases, like with the mystery behind Kitty's inherent resiliency towards magic, I would've really preferred it to have been answered in this book as it played a key role all throughout the adventure.
Unfortunately, poor pacing, characters, and a plot full of holes brings my rating of this book down to a two out of five. There was definitely good elements within this book, but the bad outweighed them by just enough for me to not recommend The Golem's Eye to any but the fans of the first book.