Stroud – The Golem’s Eye

Stroud, Jonathan. The Golem’s Eye. New York: Hyperion, 2004.

The Golem’s Eye is the second volume in Stroud’s Bartimaeus Trilogy. The book continues the story of young magician Nathaniel’s career; now as an up-and-coming member of the ministry. Assigned to hunt down the Resistance – a group of non-magical rebels seeking to overthrow the magocratic government – Nathaniel is eventually forced to turn once again to the djinni Bartimaeus for help. The story alternates between third-person narratives of Nathaniel & Kitty, a young member of the Resistance, & the first-person narrative of Bartimaeus.

I had somewhat mixed feelings about the first book in the series, The Amulet of Samarkand. On the one hand, the ideas behind this series are right up my ally – I mean, what could be cooler than a dystopian society ruled by genie-summoning magicians cruelly oppressing the commoners? Throw in a classic trickster character in the form of the djinni Bartimeaus & this series should be top shelf… but, it isn’t. What I really found compelling in book 1 was the character of Bartimaeus – throughout the parts of the book written in the third person about Nathaniel, I was really just pushing on to get back to the Bartimaeus parts. Now, in book 2, Bartimaeus’ narrative is only one of three, instead of one of two; that’s a lot of pushing to get to the ‘good stuff.’ Even then, the djinni seems somewhat more subdued than in book 1 & his actions & decisions are somewhat more implausible.

Part of the charm of book 1 was the on-going exhibition of mysterious creatures, magics & devices which fill Stroud’s world. Unfortunately, anyone expecting a new line-up of such goodies in book 2 will be sorely disappointed (think about Harry Potter –  where  Rowling offers us new tricks in each volume). The character of Kitty is ok; her frustration with the amateurish antics of the Resistance & her back story of the magicians’ cruelty are suitably moving for the reader – she’s the source of the book’s pathos. However, I think that Stroud really misses out on developing the dystopian angle here with her.

The real bummer though, is Nathaniel; he has gone from one-dimensional & lackluster to downright odious. If the reader is meant to feel any sympathy for him at all, I missed it. It isn’t even as if he’s written as a villain, or as a dark hero; he’s clearly the protagonist, but has zero redeeming qualities or features. As the book is clearly about him this was, needless to say, a real buzz-kill. Slogging through 500+ pages just waiting for a reason to like the main character is not my idea of a good read. I found myself rooting for the bad guys, really – destroying Nathaniel would have released Bartimaeus from his captivity & probably taken the pressure off of Kitty – really a win-win-win. I suspect that Nathaniel will be redeemed in book 3, Ptolemy’s Gate, but frankly, I’m not going to bother to find out.

My 2Cents? I’ll come up with a fancy rating system later, but for now, let’s call The Golem’s Eye 2 out of 5. Read the first book, but don’t bother to buy it. It’s pretty good for younger YA’s looking to continue their Harry Potter fix. I wouldn’t bother reading book 2 though; there are far better options out there.

Teen Tech Week in Albuquerque

In honor of TeenTechWeek, I hosted a robot-building program for Albuquerque area teens yesterday at the Main library. The idea was to build Bristlebots, a la EvilMadScientist & race them for fabulous prizes (books!). I ordered pager vibrator motors & batteries on-line & got a bunch of toothbrushes from the dollar store. I also had googly eyes, LED’s & toothpicks (spikes)  to glue on for decoration. The overall price was somewhere around $1.50 per bot. I built a little track designed to help the robots go in a straight line & we were ready to go!

The prototype I built at home based on EvilMadScientist’s instructions worked beautifully. Unfortunately, it ended up being pretty hard for a bunch of middle-schoolers to reproduce. I deviated slightly from the instructions in order to avoid at-home prep work. Bad idea. Out of the 12+ attempted ‘bots, we only had 5 ready to race at the end of the day (& 2 of them were mine & the other librarian’s – sad). Nevertheless, the teens seemed to have a lot of fun with it, so we’re calling it a success.

I plan on doing it again as a summer reading program, but I’ll need to ‘tweak’ my process a little bit. The biggest problem seemed to be in getting a solid connection between the wire leads & the terminals on the motors. I hadn’t actually soldered my wires to the leads; I only bent them on tightly. I think next time I’ll have to spend some time at home soldering leads to motors before the program – maybe that will work better.

A little bonus education

Meredith Farkas (Information Wants to be Free) is teaching an on-line class for the School of Library and Information Science on Web 2.0. What’s more, she’s posting class content through Drupal & making it available to all & sundry. I would strongly recommend that anyone in the library world take a look – & follow along if you have time!