The Golem's Eye (The Bartimaeus Trilogy, Book 2)

by Diana Wynne Jones

Jones shares Stroud's gift for layering humor into genuinely high-stakes magical conflict, and her protagonist Sophie navigates a world where magic operates by its own peculiar rules—much like how Bartimaeus must work within the constraints of summoning and binding. The banter between characters has that same witty, slightly exasperated tone you loved in Bartimaeus's internal monologues.

by George MacDonald

If you enjoyed watching Nathaniel navigate the treacherous politics of the magicians' government, Addison's exploration of a young outsider thrust into court power structures will feel like coming home—except she focuses on the emotional and social intelligence required to survive rather than magical prowess. The world-building is intricate without overwhelming you, and the protagonist's genuine decency in a corrupt system mirrors Nathaniel's internal conflict.

by Elizabeth Kostova

This is my slightly unconventional pick—it's literary historical fiction with gothic elements rather than straight fantasy, but it shares Stroud's obsession with layering multiple narrative voices and timelines to build an intricate puzzle. Like Bartimaeus's footnotes and asides, Kostova uses different perspectives to gradually reveal how a world operates beneath the surface, and there's genuine menace lurking in the scholarly detective work.

by Margaret Rogerson

Rogerson writes magic as something that requires negotiation and understanding rather than domination—there's an echo of Bartimaeus's perspective here, where magical beings have their own agendas and intelligence. The pacing has that same propulsive energy as The Golem's Eye, moving between multiple characters whose conflicts intersect in increasingly complicated ways, and the magic system itself becomes a character with its own rules and personality.

by Robin McKinley

Published in 1982, this gives you a different era of fantasy while maintaining that same careful attention to how magic functions within a society's political and cultural structures. McKinley's protagonist discovers that power and belonging aren't the same thing—a theme that resonates with both Nathaniel's and Kitty's arcs—and the prose has a clarity that lets complex worldbuilding breathe without becoming exposition-heavy.