Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell in Easley Library Bookworms

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Dec 28, 2008 Werner rated it it was amazing

Shelves: trad-fantasy

When I visited Australia in the summer of 2007, I wanted to take along a very thick book for the long plane flights; at over 1,000 pages in the paperback edition, this one fit the bill. Of course, that was risky; a dull book of that length would have been torture. But there was never a reason for worry on that score --this book was a delight from start to finish! Many fantasies have, to varying degrees, a considerable amount of commonality in conception, characters, and plot; but in this novel, When I visited Australia in the summer of 2007, I wanted to take along a very thick book for the long plane flights; at over 1,000 pages in the paperback edition, this one fit the bill. Of course, that was risky; a dull book of that length would have been torture. But there was never a reason for worry on that score --this book was a delight from start to finish! Many fantasies have, to varying degrees, a considerable amount of commonality in conception, characters, and plot; but in this novel, Clarke has created something genuinely unique.

As noted in the description above, the setting here is early 19th- century England in the grip of the Napoleonic Wars, the mannered, class-conscious world of Jane Austen; but this is an alternate England, in which the northern portion, for 300 years during the Middle Ages, was ruled by the Raven King, a powerful sorcerer who learned his art in the Faerie realm, and who created a tradition (though it has become moribund) of English magic. (The magic here is strictly of the incantational, not the invocational, sort, though it can involve traffic with the ruling powers of Faerie --something the title characters learn has the decided potential for more harm than good.) Against this well-realized backdrop, Clarke depicts the revival of practical magic with an assurance that makes the reader feel that, yes --this is exactly the way such a thing could have happened, if it were possible! Her characters are well-drawn, brought to life with a rare degree of artistry; and even when they're involved in fantastic situations --this is, after all, a book where people can travel, through this and other worlds, by stepping in and out of mirrors, and where a city can be magically transferred to another continent-- she makes their experiences plausible. The 19th-century flavor of the style won't be to every reader's taste, but to me it was a perfect fit for the setting; and the numerous "historical" footnotes not only created an illusion of verisimilitude, but helped to elaborate an extraordinarily detailed achievement in world-building. Clarke evokes both wonder and dead-pan humor with equal facility.

While she has a moral framework --and definitely some evil characters whose comeuppance the reader longs to see (but no spoilers here! :-)), the primary conflict here is not between good and evil people, per se, but between flawed and fallible people who have conflicting perspectives and make mistakes, and, sometimes, learn something from them. Yes, it's a story about magic --but it's also, more basically, a story about friendship and rivalry, about the difference between what really matters and what we think matters, and about having the courage to find your destiny and be who you're meant to be. ...more

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May 24, 2016 Crystal marked it as under-consideration

Shelves: if-you-like-harry-potter

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