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3.96 AVERAGE
3.96 AVERAGE
adventurous
dark
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
This hefty and magical work of literary fantasy is a masterpiece.
Full of atmospheric moments, superior world building, gorgeous prose, and wry Georgian character, Norrell and Strange exudes quality from every pore.
Unarguably a slow burn, this book will linger in the mind long after reading.
I hit a massive reading slump around page 700, but it picked up again by the end, and I will never forget Norrell or Strange in all their eccentricity!
Full of atmospheric moments, superior world building, gorgeous prose, and wry Georgian character, Norrell and Strange exudes quality from every pore.
Unarguably a slow burn, this book will linger in the mind long after reading.
I hit a massive reading slump around page 700, but it picked up again by the end, and I will never forget Norrell or Strange in all their eccentricity!
Long and dense. Feeling a bit unconnected to the characters and story and seems to be dredging through. Might pick up again in the future.
A trifling and insignificant novel but still quite interesting and worth the time to read. Not every book has to be a classic.
Questo libro mi ha letteralmente conquistata, più di [b:Piranesi|56615684|Piranesi|Susanna Clarke|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1610294515l/56615684._SX50_.jpg|73586702], che ho comunque apprezzato molto. Un urban fantasy storico ricco di personaggi realistici, interessanti e approfonditi (sia primari che secondari), con una trama semplice ma sviluppata in maniera articolata e originale, un world building dettagliato e ben studiato e una scrittura ricca di ironia, british humor ma anche di una certa vena poetica nelle descrizioni dei paesaggi e delle magie.
Recensione completa✨
Recensione completa✨
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
adventurous
dark
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
A really interesting book, not really like anything else I’ve read. Though at times the plot felt meandering and slow, no events felt particularly unnecessary or superfluous - rather the relaxed pace of the narrative and excellent use of footnotes served to draw me into the magical alternate history world. The tempo of the book ramps up in the final act, which I pretty much read in one sitting.
Almost all of the characters in this book are humbled by the author, who paints them in various states of ignorance, pettiness and greed, and yet in that they have their own charm. I found the Faerie elements particularly disturbing and nightmarish - you really get a sense that Norrell and Strange are playing with forces they barely understand. This culminates in the finale in whichnobody (except perhaps, the reader) seems to have any handle on what’s going on, and yet a satisfying victory is still achieved !
This hasn’t topped Piranesi, which I especially enjoyed as a result of what it achieved in its brevity, but I still loved this book and look forward to the short stories set in the same universe.
Almost all of the characters in this book are humbled by the author, who paints them in various states of ignorance, pettiness and greed, and yet in that they have their own charm. I found the Faerie elements particularly disturbing and nightmarish - you really get a sense that Norrell and Strange are playing with forces they barely understand. This culminates in the finale in which
This hasn’t topped Piranesi, which I especially enjoyed as a result of what it achieved in its brevity, but I still loved this book and look forward to the short stories set in the same universe.
challenging
dark
mysterious
slow-paced
This book was so slow, dense, and hard to understand that I decided to DNF it and read better things.
I really enjoyed this book. Other reviewers have already nailed the many things about it that make it a great read: many interesting and sound characters, the imaginative depiction of magic that makes it seem both real and wild without being a plot crutch. I love the sparse but lovely use of poetry; in a sense, in this book, poetry IS magic, and magic always takes a poetic form, fairy magic even more so than most. One can also tell that the author's references to various symbols, pictures and mythical elements are well grounded in serious history, as are the historical characters and events so well-woven into the storylines.
My only great complaint was that the book was long, which becomes a problem during long stretches which are very slow paced. As a writer myself I also kept imagining how much energy it must have been to write and revise it all, especially considering all the incidental detail in each scene, and this added to my weariness. The pace builds in a pleasantly powerful way towards the end, though. The somewhat open ending succeeds by rollig your imagination down a great hill and letting it continue, rather than by simply bringing the illusion to a close, which in the weeks since I finished the book I have found surprisingly agreeable. I keep coming back to it.
This is definitely a book to make me wish more than ever that I had been born in a country with as much of a mysterious, literary and historical birthright as England enjoys.
I had heard there was an effort to make a movie out of this book. While that would be enjoyable, a mini-series adaptation would be much more to my liking, and allow the richness of the book to shine through.
My only great complaint was that the book was long, which becomes a problem during long stretches which are very slow paced. As a writer myself I also kept imagining how much energy it must have been to write and revise it all, especially considering all the incidental detail in each scene, and this added to my weariness. The pace builds in a pleasantly powerful way towards the end, though. The somewhat open ending succeeds by rollig your imagination down a great hill and letting it continue, rather than by simply bringing the illusion to a close, which in the weeks since I finished the book I have found surprisingly agreeable. I keep coming back to it.
This is definitely a book to make me wish more than ever that I had been born in a country with as much of a mysterious, literary and historical birthright as England enjoys.
I had heard there was an effort to make a movie out of this book. While that would be enjoyable, a mini-series adaptation would be much more to my liking, and allow the richness of the book to shine through.