#the bartimaeus sequence

Love how all of Jonathan Stroud’s series end with the oppressive, unjust government literally getting blown up by people who recognize that it’s wrong :)

Looove the worldbuilding in the Bartimaeus books. Every scientist throughout history, from Ptolemy to Copernicus to Linnaeus, was actually a magician who couldn't've done their work without their enslaved demons. The books take place in England in the 90s/00s. From what few descriptions we get, fashion seems stuck in the 70s. Society is segregated between magicians and commoners. Commoners can sell their children to be magicians apprentices because magicians legally aren't allowed to reproduce. Electricity is a recent invention, chiefly used for light bulbs, laptops, and cattleprods that the police use on commoners who rise up against the regime. Laptops are just digital typewriters, there's no internet, and only secretaries and magicians have them. Many magicians still use quills. "Typical magician architecture" is office towers of glass and steel with minimalist white walls. British prime minister William Gladstone overthrew the monarchy with the aid of powerful demons. Cars and buses exist but in the Czech Republic they use horse carts because Gladstone sent their country back to the middle ages with a demonic nuclear bomb. Common entertainment includes theater (with special effects performed by enslaved demons), and going down to the Crystal Palace to throw rotten tomatoes at prisoners of war. Television, film, and cameras don't exist. War propaganda is shared with commoners via woodcut pamphlets. And the great war England is fighting in the year 2004? The American Revolutionary War.