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3.96 AVERAGE
3.96 AVERAGE
adventurous
mysterious
reflective
tense
medium-paced
adventurous
mysterious
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
DNF but want to finish someday.
I wanted to like this more than I did! Really had me in the beginning, but this is honestly too much for me. Long-winded and intriguing, but I tired quickly of the clever footnotes, especially on my e-reader. I think I would appreciate this a lot more as a physical book.
I wanted to like this more than I did! Really had me in the beginning, but this is honestly too much for me. Long-winded and intriguing, but I tired quickly of the clever footnotes, especially on my e-reader. I think I would appreciate this a lot more as a physical book.
emotional
informative
mysterious
reflective
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
challenging
mysterious
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell is set in a painstakingly detailed alternate Regency England, in which magic once existed but is now only studied by scholars, called theoretical magicians. When Mr. Norrell of Yorkshire reveals that he is a practicing magician and raises a young woman from the dead, he becomes famed all over England, works for the Government in the war against Napoleon, and takes an apprentice, Jonathan Strange. However, Strange and Norrell hold widely differing viewpoints about the practice of magic and about the mysterious Raven King, who was once magician-king of Northern England, and they become mortal enemies as Strange delves deeper into the mysteries of the Raven King and of the faery realm from which he came.
Clarke's world is utterly believable; I normally object to footnotes in fiction, but those she inserts as background information on the magic and history of her alternate England actually enhance the credibility of the world. It's like reading a critical edition of a 19th-century novel, so that I could almost have been convinced that there really was a tradition of magic in 19th-century England, and I just hadn't happened to run across it before. The historical details are wholly convincing, with appearances by personages from the Duke of Wellington to Lord Byron (of whom Strange comments, "No Englishman alive can equal his lordship for an insult"). Perhaps my favorite of these was the suggestion that the Government "should commission Mr Beckford, Mr Lewis and Mrs Radcliffe [all authors of well-known Gothic novels:] to create dreams of vivid horror that Mr Norrell could then pop into Buonaparte's head" (since the bad dreams Mr Norrell was creating for Napoleon proved to be inadequately frightening).
I keep seeing reviews referring to Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell as "Harry Potter meets Jane Austen", but it's not really much like either; although the period is right for Austen, the voice is far more like Anthony Trollope, and the magic is nothing at all like J.K. Rowling's. If I had to categorize it, I'd call it "Anthony Trollope meets Lord Dunsany", but even that doesn't do it justice. Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell is something so rich and strange that as soon as I'd finished it late at night, I had to resist the urge to sit down and read it right over again.
Clarke's world is utterly believable; I normally object to footnotes in fiction, but those she inserts as background information on the magic and history of her alternate England actually enhance the credibility of the world. It's like reading a critical edition of a 19th-century novel, so that I could almost have been convinced that there really was a tradition of magic in 19th-century England, and I just hadn't happened to run across it before. The historical details are wholly convincing, with appearances by personages from the Duke of Wellington to Lord Byron (of whom Strange comments, "No Englishman alive can equal his lordship for an insult"). Perhaps my favorite of these was the suggestion that the Government "should commission Mr Beckford, Mr Lewis and Mrs Radcliffe [all authors of well-known Gothic novels:] to create dreams of vivid horror that Mr Norrell could then pop into Buonaparte's head" (since the bad dreams Mr Norrell was creating for Napoleon proved to be inadequately frightening).
I keep seeing reviews referring to Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell as "Harry Potter meets Jane Austen", but it's not really much like either; although the period is right for Austen, the voice is far more like Anthony Trollope, and the magic is nothing at all like J.K. Rowling's. If I had to categorize it, I'd call it "Anthony Trollope meets Lord Dunsany", but even that doesn't do it justice. Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell is something so rich and strange that as soon as I'd finished it late at night, I had to resist the urge to sit down and read it right over again.
adventurous
dark
funny
inspiring
mysterious
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
adventurous
dark
funny
mysterious
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No