Dear Mr. Stroud,
I am a big fan of your books. I love your use of real-world people such as scientists as magicians, like Tycho Brahe and Archimedes. I have amassed quite a few questions while reading the books over the past two years. They are quite um... detailly.

1. Are any demons/spirits other than elementals earth-based? All spirits seem to be the other types, and view earth as the corruption of our world.

2. What are giants? Are they magical, yet nothing to do with the Other Place, like golems? You only mentioned them once, when Bartimaeus talks about slaying Humbaba in a footnote, but I was curious nonetheless.

3. Telescopes are stated to have had imps captive inside. Are any modern appliances such as TVs or computers magically based, or only those used by magicians?

4. Was Honorius the afrit that almost killed Bartimaeus in Prague?

5. How did magicians from different cultures and continents communicate the true names of spirits and summoning incantations? Bartimaeus was summoned by Algonquin shamans, yet how would they know his true, presumably Latin name? Did different summoning incantations appear all around the world, in different languages, or is only one language used in summoning?

6. Does the amount of essence in a demon equal its relative power? When a demon changes shape, does the essence spread out, lowering its density? Is the amount of pain a demon feels when hurt equal to the proportion of its essence it's missing?

7. In the Siege of Prague, the British djinn were armoured in red and white. Was this their essence taking the form of armour, or real, physical armour? If a demon were to mold their essence into, say, a bullet-proof vest, would it be useless against a Detonation or silver bullet, or would it act like a real bullet-proof vest?

Thanks for answering our questions. It really helps to understand the books.

Hi there,

APOLOGIES for taking nearly a year to answer this.

Bart and his ilk certainly view earth as anathema, symbolic of everything they're tied to when they come to our world. But the barrier that separates the OP from our world (which Kitty observes) involves all 4 elements, so it may be that some spirits are not so wholly aligned to fire and air as Bart, and are more closely associated with water and earth. I suspect they're pretty rare.

The Giant Humbaba: he crops up in the Epic of Gilgamesh and Bart is (as usual) name-dropping here. I suspect he's a spirit of a kind, closely linked to forests and nature - perhaps summoned by one of the very early (very powerful) magicians in the age of URUK.

In Amulet I made some references to computers, but later soft-pedalled this because in Nat's world 'hard' technology is simply not as advanced as in ours, because magic has impeded its progress. Some equivalent technology, such as the telescope mentioned, is magically powered; some (maybe developed in societies that have little or no magic for a while) is more conventional. So, for instance, the cars in London aren't magical, but approximations of real ones.

Honorius: No, I think it was Patterknife.

There is no one 'true' language of summoning: different cultures have used their own languages to bring djinn across. Bart has many names and it is possible to bring him over using any of them. Having said that, in the western world, magicians hold the ancient cultures in awe and have tended to keep on using the old languages as the tool of summoning. Technically it would be possible for Nat to do it in English, but that would mean recalibrating (riskily) all the forumulae into a different language, which none of the magicians dares to do.

Essence: I think a more powerful entity DOES have more fundamental essence than a lesser one. Essence doesn't obey normal physical laws but I think it's safe to say that in extreme cases it would become less dense: this stops Bart, for example, becoming anything utterly massive: he simply couldn't hold the form together. As for pain, yes - the more your essence is wounded or removed, the weaker you are and the more lousy you feel.

Hmm. The Armour. It might well have been separate 'real' armour, forced upon them by Gladstone. This armour might have had special attributes that helped keep them safe. They could certainly adopt the semblance of armour, too, of course, but that wouldn't be any more bullet-proof than any other shape they took on.

Thanks for the questions! I had to think pretty hard on this one!

i doubt it would be armor, b/c armor is made of steel, and in a previous question asked by a previous member (previous wasn't necessary there. . . ) you stated that steel, at the very least, would be uncomfortable, and thus hinder the djinni/spirit/you catch the drift

About the elements and djinn:

The way I've imagined it, basic djinn have the elements of air and fire. I picture afrits as being almost wholly fire-oriented, and marids to be water-oriented. And I quote from Wikipedia: "In Arabic folklore, a Marid (Arabic: ãÇÑÏý), in common mythology, is a djinn associated with open waters of the Seas and Oceans where it finds sanctuary."

And about the afrit who almost killed Bartimaeus:

Yes, it was Patterknife, who is not even half as cool as Honorius.