ricardienne | Book Review!

This morning, just after breakfast, I finished Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell.

No, I didn't think it was the book to end all books, the "adult Harry Potter," the savior of fantasy, or whatever. But I did like it. A lot. It's set in a version of that lovely, nebulous England-with-Magic that combines the best of both worlds (no pun intended). You get wizardry and enchantments; fairies and beasties, but you also get

This royal throne of kings, this scepter'd isle,
This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,
This other Eden, demi-paradise,
This fortress built by Nature for herself
Against infection and the hand of war,
This happy breed of men, this little world,
This precious stone set in the silver sea,
Which serves it in the office of a wall,
Or as a moat defensive to a house,
Against the envy of less happier lands,
This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England,

This nurse, this teeming womb of royal kings,
Fear'd by their breed and famous by their birth,
Renowned for their deeds as far from home,
For Christian service and true chivalry,
As is the sepulchre in stubborn Jewry,
Of the world's ransom, blessed Mary's Son,
This land of such dear souls, this dear dear land,
Dear for her reputation through the world,
Is now leased out, I die pronouncing it,
Like to a tenement or pelting farm:
England, bound in with the triumphant sea
Whose rocky shore beats back the envious siege
Of watery Neptune, is now bound in with shame,
With inky blots and rotten parchment bonds:
That England, that was wont to conquer others,
Hath made a shameful conquest of itself.
Ah, would the scandal vanish with my life,
How happy then were my ensuing death!

(I suppose I am a bit of an Anglophile.)

Anyway, I love Chrestomanci, I love Jaspar Fforde, I thoroughly enjoyed Mairelon the Magician and Magician's Ward, so it isn't surprising that I liked this one.

So, enough of this: what's the book about?

Well, it's hard to say. It's set during the Napoleonic Wars. In England, magic is a study for gentlemen (Yes, this is fake!Jane Austen at its best: this author does it much better than Patricia Wrede, incidentally), but in a theoretical sense only. Practical English Magic has been lost since the late Middle Ages, when the Raven King, a semi-mythological figure who was raised by fairies and ruled the North for 300-odd years disappeared. But one man, the eccentric and crochety scholar Mr. Norrel, sees the chance for a revival. He is, after all, the only practical magician in over a hundred years, and he hopes to shape magic into a respectable and and respected profession.

That's more or less the set-up; to say anything more about the plot would give quite a bit away. Suffice to say, there are many strands, whose interweavings don't become clear until the very end.

Magic here is the folk-tradition fairy-based magic -- something that I generally can't stand in novels. I'm fine as far as the folk-tales and ballads are concerned, but once an author starts dragging "Faery" or "the Sidhe" in their twee little burrows into a book, as a rule, I hate it. This book is the exception. Yes, there are fairies. Yes, they, their magic, their kingdoms, their roads, and their propensity for stealing people away are central to the novel. No, it isn't annoying.

So, the next time you have 700-ish pages of time to spare, check it out.