chaos weaver

There is plenty of comedy, and Queezle is there to distract and delight us, but there's also Bart failing at boosting an imp's (Nubbin) morale who was summoned for his first battle (and probably last). There's Bart's pattern recognition and almost resignation. He tells us he's been summoned to Prague for centuries (at least 3), and now he's watching it crumble as he's done for millennia:

Thus, after several hundred years and a dozen masters, my ties to Prague were broken. But as my grateful essence fled in all directions, and I looked down upon the burning city and the marching troops, on the wailing children and the whooping imps, on the death throes of one empire and the bloody baptism of the next, I must say I didn't feel particularly triumphant. I had a feeling it was all going to get a whole lot worse.

It's also where we first meet Honorius, so menacing and skillful here, and later see what it actually means to be a magician's favourite.

All this is especially interesting after reading RoS (truly, reading AoS, then RoS, and then finishing the trilogy is proving to be a great idea) and drawing the parallels between the empires portrayed in each book and the people at the top. If on the one hand, Solomon was the lesser evil, quite incompetent without the Ring that he did not create, but strong in his resolve to provide and aid; on the other, Gladstone is a menace and built this insane weapon and uses it for bloodshed in the name of glory.

But that's just the thing—Solomon inherited this power and chose differently. From how he tells us the story of finding the Ring, it's clear that it had been used for terrorising people (Uraziel even seems fond of Solomon if anything). The Ring was buried with its user presumably to spare everyone else from its reach.

Gladstone is buried with the sources of his power—the Staff and Honorius trapped in his bones. And how incredible is it that to activate it Nathaniel has Bartimaeus in his bones (and overall body, of course) and wields the Staff. But also that by 'inheriting' this artefact he mirrors Solomon's choice to protect and correct his former behaviour as yet another empire dies.

Now, I don't mean to romanticise either Solomon or Nathaniel, hence the 'lesser evil'. But I found it really interesting that neither of them created a weapon but end up using them 'for good'. And it's also interesting how Nathaniel mirrors both him and Gladstone in his last choices, though in different ways. (There's also Khaba and Ammet, of course, but I've seen plenty of amazing takes on that already. I could also talk at length about Kitty and Asmira, really.)

My one complaint is that we got too little Faquarl antagonising him, even though I understand why, narratively, he was left out from that point onwards.

Faquarl to Bartimaeus in RoS, ch. 19: "You'll be the death of me, Bartimaeus, you really will!"

Jonathan Stroud, you evil, evil man.

It's hilarious to me how he essentially reacts the same both times.