May Reviews

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Susanna Clarke
4/5
TorBooks 1/8/06
Kindle. Bookclub

We made a bit of an error with this book. The bookclub voted in this one without checking the size! 1000 pages took us a while to get through, luckily I bought it on Kindle, which saved me the back ache of carrying it around.
It definitely took a little while to get into this one, once Jonathan Strange appeared things became more interesting and there was rarely a moment I didn't want to turn the page and know what was going to happen. I enjoyed the writing style which very much put me into the setting of the book and my favourite characters are Childermas and Vinculus. Luckily rumour has it that a new book by Clarke is a prequel for Childermas and Vinculus which sounds awesome to me.
It was too long really, but I enjoyed it.
On the other hand, a consistent complaint that people have with first novels is that the idea is not fully formed and feels rushed. This was certainly not the case here, the 1000 pages allows the writing to stretch and the story to spool out just how the author wants it to.
I'd also recommend watching the TV series as it was very true to the book and would save you alot of time. It was certainly written with a live action version in mind, lots of descriptions of what the magic would look like, and the series covered it well.
I felt that Clarke definitely manipulated us effectively with the introduction of each character. Infact I would say the developing characterisation of each and every person on the page was brilliant. It's so different from any ideas that you might have about magical books already. It's a tremendous work of her imagination. Bravo.