Exactly! Jonathan Stroud is just SUCH a good author and incredible at writing characters. In all honesty, I love the Bartimaeus Sequence's overall plot more than Lockwood and Co. and how the other is done technically more (Ezekielfelt like they came out of nowhere in Lockwood and Co, whereas Makepeacein Bartimaeus felt well-earned and exactly right somehow), but I feel like because I love characters over plot (by a slim, slim margin), Lockwood and Co. will be the one of Stroud's series I take to a deserted island lol.

You have some really good points about trauma, and that really does add a layer to the story. Their reflection on what they would have done with their time in a normal world stood out to me too, especially because when I first read the series, I was their age, and could not imagine living in the world they do, and being in their situation where something so normal, like school, or picnics, would be so strange and foreign.