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rjleamon11 's review for:
The Amulet of Samarkand
by Jonathan Stroud
Listened to this ya fantasy on Dawn's recommendation, and I did enjoy it: the reader was excellent, and the story is a gleeful, explanation-free "alternate reality" in which magicians rule London and Prague (but not the rest of the world?) while a non-magical Resistance is fighting against them, but there are cars and telephones. It felt a bit like Patrick Rothfuss's books where you just have to dive in and take what you're given.
However, Stroud's characters are mostly unlikable, it's yet another male-centered fantasy world, and by the end the unpredictability began to feel like a deliberate set-up to make me read the other two novels to figure it all out. Well, I don't think I like the people well enough to go through two more books, though I might skim the next one to figure out the grand idea.
And I *don't* feel like we've seen the end of Mrs. Underwood!
However, Stroud's characters are mostly unlikable, it's yet another male-centered fantasy world, and by the end the unpredictability began to feel like a deliberate set-up to make me read the other two novels to figure it all out. Well, I don't think I like the people well enough to go through two more books, though I might skim the next one to figure out the grand idea.
And I *don't* feel like we've seen the end of Mrs. Underwood!