You know, I'll edit the post and think of a good introduction to my questions later. (or not)

1) According to your books, every djinn/spirit thingy has a form on the seventh plane that is different from their forms on the other planes. You've vaguely described some of the characters' forms there, but Bartimaeus never went into detail on himself. What do you picture him as on the seventh plane? I always think of him as the blue ram thing that appeared on the cover of that one book in the trilogy for lack of anything else.

2) I noticed that the spirit's names also were the names of really old historical people, religious figures, and other stuff. Where'd you get the idea for that? I think it's really nifty.

3) Apx how many hours did you spend researching for the background info of this trilogy?

4) I really like your writing style. It flows nicely, things are paced right, it manages to switch moods smoothly from comedic to tragic, and that little thing in the first book where it started the story from the present and filled you in with the past as you went along was absatively spiffy. So, who inspired/influenced you?

5) Inspired by a topic on the forums. So, what does determine to level of a djinn/spirit thing? (Bartimaeus is 4th level, Honorius is 12th level. Tis confusing.)

Hi there,

Okay, some pretty tricky questions here, but I'll have a go...

1. What does Bart look like on the seventh plane? Well, to save Bart's modesty, I can't go into that here. Let's just say that it's not quite as suave and sophisticated as he would have liked. I think that while higher spirits like Bart and Faquarl can easily choose svelte forms on the lower planes, the seventh plane incarnation is likely to be pretty chaotic, to say the least, because it's closest to the randomness of the Other Place. I'm thinking lots of limbs, odd members sticking out every which way... But this is a public forum, so I won't go into details.

2. Names of the spirits: every spirit who's kicked about the world over various centuries accumulates by-names from the different cultures that he/she's visited, so you quite often get ones (such as Xerxes, Bartimaeus...) that reflect back on some historic period. As an author I like the way it gives things texture - it gives us a sense of deep time without having to go into details.

3. Time spent researching trilogy. Hmm... no idea, but not that much if you mean going out to libraries, scanning the web etc. I've got a lot of books on folklore, myths and history, and quite often all I have to do to is stick out a hand and grab the nearest volume. Quick flip and we're done. Most of the details Bart gives us of his exploits are fairly brief - I don't need to go into too much depth and seldom have to leave my chair. Consequently I am now a lot less fit than when I began the series...

4. Who inspired me? Too many names to mention, really. I grew up loving the usual fantasy suspects: Tolkein, Lewis, Le Guin, Leiber, Peake, Vance, but over the years I've read less fantasy and devoured a lot of other types of fiction, which gave me all kinds of stylistic tips. Often this has nothing in common with the genre that I work in; for example, when writing Amulet, I was reading quite a lot of Evelyn Waugh, who is a brilliant stylist who writes wonderful sentences (though paradoxically a lot of his themes leave me cold). Whether or not such reading made me write any better I don't know, but I'm hopeful it didn't have a bad effect...

5. Levels of spirit. Well, just as within big human corporations there are many, many levels of hierarchy, linking everyone from the teaboy to the boss, and looking in from outside much of the terminology is totally baffling, the same is true of the spirits. We know the basic types (imp, foliot, djinn, afrit, marid) but within each group there's all kinds of jostling for status and I never go into it in any great detail. But whenever Bart meets another spirit he's always quick to size up relative levels so he knows whether to beat the other one up, converse politely, or simply run away. His level is pretty middle of the road. Honorius is certainly a lot more powerful, and Faquarl and Jabor are both (in simple power terms) a few notches higher up the pole.

Hope this helps!

Cheers,

Jonathan

is ramuthra the most powerful entity in the trilgoy? or is there someone stronger than him? :)

sharingansaber wrote:is ramuthra the most powerful entity in the trilgoy? or is there someone stronger than him? :)

We believe he is, though that is arguable, as he's the strongest spirit that we've seen in the book.

Ramuthra is arguably the most powerful, there's a topic dedicated to it.
As Nero said, he's the strongest seen in the book, but I don't think he's the strongest mentioned.
Bartimaeus speaks of a spirit that destroyed Atlantis.
While Ramuthra is certaintly capable to doing this, I think the Atlantis spirit is stronger.