Books like Buried Fire

I'd never heard of this book by Jonathan Stroud and now I know why. It predates the Bartimaeus trilogy, so very early in his career, and while his craft is reasonably sound, the characters are all either villains or hard-to-like heroes, and the boy I thought was supposed to be the protagonist is unpleasant--the kind who's corrupted by the bad guys and doesn't know it. I made it about halfway through before I realized I wasn't enjoying it, and didn't need it for the reading challenge enough to persist.