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Aug 19, 2011

Kelly rated it:

Without a doubt the best book I have read this year. I write that without hesitation and with a beaming smile on my face. Incredible. Enthralling. Amazing. The book was over 800 pages long and it did not seem long enough. When I finished the book, I immediately turned out the light and tried to drift off to sleep, because I knew nothing else I did that night was going to top the feeling I got after blowing through the last 100 pages like a madwoman. I want to start it over again, immediately.
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31 comments like (122 people liked it)

Nov 04, 2011

Choupette rated it:

I have read this book three times now, and each time I loved it more than the last, which is just a figure of speech really, because I think I loved it as much as it is possible to love a book the first time I read it and that is still how much I love it. A lot of people say they don't want to read this because it is fantasy, which is grossly unfair: it implies it is in the same class as all that other crappy and marginally-less-crappy fantasy out there, up with which I have been thoroughly fed More...

52 comments like (72 people liked it)

Dec 11, 2011

Keely rated it:

Sigh, just what we need, another revolutionary, unusual fantasy book by an author with a practiced mastery of tone. When will authors like Clarke realize that what the fantasy genre needs is more pseudo-medieval monomyths that sprawl out into fifteen volumes?

Her magic didn't conveniently solve all of the characters' problems, instead, they wasted time thinking through conflicts and then had to solve them by taking action; how dull is that? The magic was weird, anyways. It didn't have More...

26 comments like (70 people liked it)

Dec 17, 2009

Eric rated it:

I so wanted to like this book. The idea is just wonderful. I was so pleased for a while to be in that world, a historical England. I love the dialogue and descriptions. And I love the idea of magic in an otherwise real setting, as though it were a normal part of our actual world. But it was so frustrating to read after a while. The footnotes, auuuugh, the footnotes. They were cute at first, because the book is written sort of like a history book from that period. But after a while they were jus More...

20 comments like (96 people liked it)

Sep 30, 2010

Ceridwen rated it:

Choupette's review captures the essence and beauty of this book, and you should totally read it.

This book devastated me, which seems out of place given its winking tone and meandering story-telling style. Its always seemed to me that there are two kinds of magic: sleight of hand and magic. Because this book was avowedly about the the latter, I forgot about the former, forgot that storytellers are tricksters and liars, conjuring people out of the air and dancing them about so that you More...

21 comments like (47 people liked it)

Dec 17, 2009

Tiza rated it:

Although Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell turns out to be a book I dearly love, I'm afraid I can't recommend it to just anyone. Whether you'll like it or not will truly depend on what you expect it to be. If you wish for a fast-paced excitement then this book is probably not for you. Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell is a blend of meticulously researched historical fiction and imaginative fantasy, sprinkled here and there with biting social comedy, and written in a style similar to Austen's, whic More...

9 comments like (52 people liked it)

Mar 20, 2008

Vilja rated it:

Actually a really good book. Loved the detail and all the footnotes. But in case you have no patience to read a long and rambly book, but want to know what happens, here's a recap:

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Mr Norrell
I've spent all my life studying magic and now I'm going to revive it in England. By which I mean I want everyone to see how good I am and admire me. Fairy, revive Lady Pole so the cabinet ministers will be impressed with me.

The gentleman with thistle-down hair
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20 comments like (77 people liked it)

Aug 17, 2011

Paul rated it:

If a novel of nearly 900 pages can be summarised in one phrase then Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell may, I think, be described as a stately, sly, witty, intricate, comic retelling of Dracula, with digressions and very little blood.

Count Dracula takes life from beautiful young ladies, enslaves them, enchants them, enraptures them, steals them away, into his own twilit (oops, sorry) vampire world – they become something other that what they were, undead, not alive yet not dead, creature More...

32 comments like (17 people liked it)

Dec 16, 2009

Colin rated it:

I'd heard for a long time how amazing this book was, and I was decidedly unmoved by it. I did read the whole thing, and at 800 pages, that felt like an accomplishment. Clarke obviously put a lot of work into the back story, creating an entire historical library of magic that is cited in footnotes throughout. That kind of detailed work is, i suppose, admirable. However, I found the two main characters (rich white English men) boring. I couldn't bring myself to really care what happened to them, a More...

1 comment like (27 people liked it)

Dec 17, 2009

Meagan rated it:

Jesus Christ, this book reads like molasses. It's like the author took every book from her Brit Lit class and consciously tried to make it wordier and longer than all of them combined. I get the point she wants to make, but I honestly could not get past the second chapter.

It also was so incredibly pretentious. The whole thing has this superior feel, like having a conversation with someone who is absolutely reassured of how much smarter they are than you. It left me feeling bored, st More...

17 comments like (46 people liked it)

Jun 20, 2011

Craig rated it:

NOTE: I didn't put the spoiler flag on this review because it technically doesn't give anything big away. Nevertheless it does come pretty close. So, if want to dive into the book completely clean you might consider moving on. You have been warned.

On with the review. First off, this is not Harry Potter for grown ups. I really hate it when people use that lazy comparison not only because it's completely stupid but because it isn't even remotely true.

With that off my c More...

1 comment like (15 people liked it)

Mar 24, 2008

Martine rated it:

You have to give Susanna Clarke props for ambition. In itself, her combination of fantasy and well-researched historical fiction isn’t new. Guy Gavriel Kay has made a career out of it, and a very good one, too. (If you haven’t read any Kay, do yourself a favour and rectify that situation as soon as possible. Seriously, the man is brilliant.) However, to write a huge historical fantasy novel in the language of the time in which the story is set is a different feat altogether, and in Jonathan Stra More...

14 comments like (16 people liked it)

Jul 12, 2011

Milo rated it:

It certainly takes a powerful kind of magic to propel me through a tome like Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell at the pace that I went. It had the captivating air of a refreshing new world full of fun insights that kept me interested as I read it. I slowly burned away my free time after school and work with my nose buried in this book. Generally I appreciate the quick and dirty reads that start fast and end fast with lots of nonsensical fluff to keep my brain preoccupied, but Susanna Clarke pr More...

9 comments like (13 people liked it)

Feb 09, 2012

Dulac3 rated it:

Fantastic story. One of the few that actually lives up to the hype. Be warned though: this is a loooong book and it is true that, from one point of view at least, it can be said that not too much happens in it. The title tells us what the two main sections of the book will cover: the lives of the last two true magicians in an alternate 19th century Britain. They are the bookish, annoying and altogether full of himself Mr. Norrell and the flighty, brilliant and altogether full of himself Jonathan More...

0 comments like (7 people liked it)

Feb 12, 2011

mark rated it:

the hero of this novel, mr. norrell, is in many ways a stranger in a strange land, uncomfortable with base emotions and disappointed with the shabbiness and inadequacies of others...yet always yearning for true companionship. a dignified, erudite, and refined gentleman: quietly soulful and elegantly restrained; commanding in his encyclopedic knowledge of the magical arts.

the other character, a fey and unreliable sort named "jonathan strange", offers fleeting friendship tha More...

13 comments like (19 people liked it)

Jan 24, 2012

Apatt rated it:

Neil Gaiman said that this book is "hard to overpraise", I will make an attempt thus:

While I was reading the second half of this book it occurred to me that I don't actually need to read any other novel ever again, I could just read this one book over and over again for the rest of my days and when the Grim Reaper calls I shall have this book clutched possessively in my stiff, unyielding fingers.

Momentary insanity of course, but it is indicative of the devotion More...

8 comments like (10 people liked it)

Apr 14, 2009

Jon rated it:

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here

7 comments like (7 people liked it)

Oct 24, 2007

Sara rated it:

everything about the description of this book sounded like a promising, dreamy book - the type i could get lost in: dark, brooding 1800's england, with magic, intrigue, history... constantly compared to harry potter crossed with charles dickens...i beg to differ... maybe if they meant harry potter's most dull class on the history of magic - a dry historical reference book that hermione would read... and bleak house (which is probably the only dickens book i couldn't ever bring myself to read - t More...

2 comments like (14 people liked it)

Dec 01, 2007

Katie rated it:

I place Susanna Clarke squarely in the company of Tolkien and Frank Herbert; that is, writers with the ability to imagine absolutely astounding fictional worlds - with incredibly rich and complete histories, cultures and people - but who don't have the skill to write down a compelling story. That's why enjoyed the movie versions of Dune and LOTR, but hated being forced to read them in written form. What Clarke has written here is a history book, a book that shows off the incredible world she h More...

14 comments like (19 people liked it)

Sep 19, 2007

Kristen rated it:

My father picked out this book for me. I went home to the beach for a week and read all three books I took in 3 days. On day four, I needed a new book. My father took me to the mainland bookstore (only about one room in size) and picked out this book with the words "This is a nice big heavy book. I'm sure you'll love it."
And he wasn't wrong. From the very first page I was hooked. I myself am never a fan of sycophantic hyperbole, but in this case it is nothing but the More...

0 comments like (10 people liked it)

May 03, 2008

LaDonna rated it:

I wanted so much to love this big fat book, to add it to my pile of favorites. But after getting bogged down in endless meandering footnotes and other extraneous nonsense, I shelved it. That was at least a year ago. Maybe more.

And there it sits, collecting so much dust. Every time I see it I feel guilty. "I should try harder," I say to myself. "I should give it at least one more go."

But then I realize there are so many other, bigger, better fish in the More...

5 comments like (15 people liked it)

Jul 03, 2011

BunWat added it

I give up. Maybe someday, when I'm retired and have long hours to contemplate and ponder and let the atmosphere build but right now I just don't have time or patience for a book that takes 120 pages to tell me what a character was wearing. Okay I exaggerate, but not by much. So, maybe someday, when I'm on a cruise to Alaska, or stuck in bed recuperating from surgery. Or maybe not. Maybe I'll just read eight or nine other books.

24 comments like (11 people liked it)

Aug 13, 2010

Jasmine rated it:

Editted, I actually ran out of time for this review because I ran into todd at the library and talked to him instead of writing it:
So I actually took notes about what should be in this review, not to assume that means that I won't forget anything, I definitely will but hopefully I will forget less than I otherwise would and therefore will not have to rewrite the review too many times to fix its ultimate sadness at being an incomplete work.

I asked several people if I should re More...

7 comments like (10 people liked it)

Nov 05, 2011

Amber ~Geektastic~ rated it:

What can I possibly say that will convey to you the depth of my love for this book? In all honesty, I really cannot find the right words, but I will write this anyway.

I read this monstrous doorstop of a book a little over a year ago, and I remember very little of anything else from that time; I was immersed within the first few pages, and only returned to reality when it was unavoidable. I read it at work, I read it while eating, I read it while very nearly sleeping. I read it in a More...

4 comments like (8 people liked it)

Jan 02, 2009

Werner rated it:

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 nove More...

6 comments like (11 people liked it)

Jan 20, 2008

Shane rated it:

My friend recommended this book to me. And while I'm not too sure what prompted the recommendation, I'm thankful for it none the less. The book's not exactly an easy one to classify. One of the tags on Amazon lists it as fantasy. I suppose this is reasonable. Yet somehow it deserves a better adjective. It may be more accurate to call it historical fiction. Indeed, as one other reviewer has noted, it's often hard to tell where the history ends and the fiction begins. Yet "historical f More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Feb 02, 2008

Henrik rated it:

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here

4 comments like (2 people liked it)

Oct 04, 2007

Darga rated it:

"Can a magician kill a man by magic?" Lord Wellington asked Strange. Strange frowned. He seemed to dislike the question. "I suppose a magician might, he admitted, "but a gentleman never could."

i hated this book for the first few hundred pages, and by the final page i was in love with it.

it's very british and dry and snarky. it's a book about britain in the 1800s, but magic has been rediscovered. it's a very satirical story about britain that only More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Nov 02, 2007

John rated it:

f I asked you to name a modern fantasy novel by a British woman that clocks in at 800+ pages and has as its subject magic in England, you'd probably give me a title that begins with Harry Potter and... and I could hardly blame you, though these are also characteristics of Susanna Clarke's debut novel, Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell.

That's where the similarity ends, however, except for both being novels I didn't particularly want to put down. The style is reminiscent of Jane Austen an More...

0 comments like (6 people liked it)

Aug 06, 2007

Silvercharmer rated it:

This book was not at all what I expected. I was anticipating the typical "Cocky-ass student tried to overthrow the wise master and as a result does stupid shit and is generally evil", a la Darth Vader and good ol' Obi-wan. That is not what this is. The writing style is curious, like reading an annotated historical account written in the 19th century with a 20th (or 21st?) century consciousness. The advantage is that there is a lot of subtle wit in the prose that could not necessarily b More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

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