Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell

TheAuldGrump

First Post
Wonderful book, with powerful but fallible magicians.

I could not believe it when
Mr. Norrel made the agreement with the fay, and the loophole that he missed.

The Auld Grump, the King is dead, long live the King....
 

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Starman

Adventurer
I also enjoyed the book and would love to see more stories told in this setting. The mythology created for it was fantastic.
 

F5

Explorer
I just finished reading The Ladies of Grace Adieu. I thought it was very good (I liked Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norell a lot, too). It has one story that includes Jonathan Strange, the rest are all stories told in the same setting but unrelated to the novel. There are some interesting takes on how magicians of various types deal with Faeries, and their magic. There's one story, Mr Simonelli the Fairy Widower, which I saw as a little bit of an homage to HP Lovecraft, which made me smile.

All in all, these books are very clever, once you can appreciate the tounge-in-cheek 19th-century writing style. All literary magic needs to have some kind of limiting factor, or else you have characters that can literally do anything, and there's no conflict. Susanna Clarke's magicians are limited mainly by their stiff and nebbishy personalities, and personal hang-ups, and that really amuses me.
 




death tribble

First Post
I get a book and it goes on the pile to read. I alternate between fantasy/Sci-Fi and modern/non-fiction. So I eventually got aound to reading it. I liked it. But the faerie , oh he had it coming for a long, long time. The idea of having a magician in the Peninsula War was interesting as were the limitations as to what you can do with magic.
I liked it.
 

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