Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

Phew. That took longer than it should have. The last 300 pages of this book seemed to drag on forever, though I'll admit that's probably more my fault than the book's. I read the first 700 pages so easily during the holidays that not being able to read for very long at a time made the last 300 pages go so slow.

This was a long book. A 1000 pages is a lot of words is a lot of information is a lot of time to keep a book interesting. I was never completely blown away by this book and I hardly ever felt like I really had to keep reading. It took its sweet time, which is fine, but also long. The whole thing with the footnotes felt very weird to me – I kept wondering throughout the book if those would turn out to be really important in the end and if I should pay attention or if they were supposed to be a fun addition. So meh, that felt unnecessary at times and at the same time I was sometimes left with so many questions. Sometimes the book felt like it was being long for the sake of being long because the more information you put in a book, the more interesting it becomes (no!!! stuff doesn't work like that!!!).

To me, this book was not fireworks.

It was, however, fun, well written and very original. The way magic and magicians were regarded in this book was great, very different from what I've read before. I was a huge fan of Strange and his story arc, becoming more independant, with his own ideas about magic and the way it should be handled. I thought the conversation he had with Norell before he left him was great, just as the way they acted around each other when Strange returned to England in the end. I liked the growth and the continuity in both the characters.
Also, there were some side(-ish) characters that I loved and that should have a special place in this review – Childermass, Arabella, Segundus: you were all lovely.

If I weigh the good against the meh of this book, the good wins. Maybe it could've been shorter or clearer and maybe the longness and vagueness are part of the charm. In general, this was good. Not I-want-to-scream-it-from-the-rooftops-fantastic, but nevertheless, good.
So yeah, to me it was clear this was definetely not 5 stars, but I'm a bit more tempted to give it 4 than 3.

((First time I actually posted a review on here. Hopefully I did okay.))