My feelings hurt and I am... conflicted.

Through this book, I kept thinking that Kitty should have been the main character, really. SHE is the one who actually cares about both commoners and spirits. Nathaniel is full of prejudices and basically a slave master up until more than halfway in the third book. His character development is in the wrong direction for almost the entire series, then suddenly turns around in the end. (This is nicely shown by the name-switch in the narration, which was a neat detail actually.)

It is Kitty and not Nathaniel who makes the connection Ptolemy did, and even towards the end, Bartimaeus says he wouldn't have agreed if not for Kitty. His bond with Nathaniel doesn't live up to his bond with Kitty, despite spending all three books bound together.

It's only in the last battle scene, after the union that I felt like they really bonded. Then, of course, in the last moment Nathaniel pulls a Ptolemy too, which destroyed all my feelings - but despite me loving the ending, it still felt like too little, too late?

TLDR; I get that the point is that in the end they win TOGETHER, the three of them, and that's great - but the individual relationships within that trio felt unbalanced and not as satisfying.

Soon I'm going to read Ring of Solomon for the first time (the other three books were re-reads) but right now I don't really feel like it. I'm afraid I won't like it as much without Nat and Kitty?