The story follows the career of a teenage magician Nathaniel (aka John Mandrake) and a five-thousand-year-old djinni Bartimaeus, whom he has summoned and nominally controls, through the alternative history of the peak of London's domination as a magical oligarchy.
The series is set in London during the late 1900s or possibly the early 2000s in a parallel universe where trained people can summon demons to do their bidding.
The most recent nation to do this is the British Empire (of which London is the capital) that has dominated Europe since the mid-19th century and continues to do so at the time of the story.
Things soon get out of hand and Bartimaeus and Nathaniel find themselves caught in the middle of magical espionage, murder, blackmail, and revolt.
In the end, the golem is revealed to have been created by Kavka, a Czech magician, and animated by Henry Duvall, the London Chief of Police.
The Ring of Solomon revisits the universe created in the Bartimaeus Trilogy, although the setting shifts from modern London to Jerusalem, 950 BC.
In 2002, Miramax purchased the publishing and screen rights to the series as Harvey Weinstein's replacement for The Lord of the Rings as its fantasy film franchise.
[2] In October 2010, Disney-Hyperion published the first book as a graphic novel written by Jonathan Stroud and Andrew Donkin, with art by Lee Sullivan and colors by Nicolas Chapuis.