Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

This is not my kind of book, and I doubt that I'll ever reread it.

It's a very long and very fanciful book about magicians and fairies, set mainly in England in the early 19th century, and gives the impression of having been written at that time—being written in a deliberately old-fashioned style and with a deliberately old-fashioned view of magic and fairies, as though the author had never read any fantasy story written since the 19th century. She has put the 20th and 21st centuries out of her mind entirely in writing this book.

Clearly she has done plenty of research into history, geography, and the traditional roots of magical legend.

The story rambles on and on, digressing freely, and I felt obliged to follow it through, rather like the wedding guest listening to the Ancient Mariner. In the end there is what amounts to a happy ending, although the happiness seems oddly muted and the story ends without a bang.

I dislike the way magic is presented in this book. Magicians perform spells, but we never get to hear the spells or understand how they work in any way. Evidently the magicians understand more about it than we do, but we never get to share in their knowledge, the magic remains mysterious, and its limitations unknown; although it's extremely powerful and perhaps has no limitations. I don't approve of fiction in which anything you want to accomplish can be done with an unexplained spell; it strikes me as cheating. I prefer to read about magic that has rules and limitations and some kind of theoretical basis.

I also fail to be enchanted with the characters, which are well presented but curiously unappealing. Jonathan Strange is a relatively sympathetic character, but even he falls somewhat short of real likeability, perhaps because he's obsessively devoted to magic.