This is a winding and detailed tale of two magicians in England around the time of the war against Bonaparte. Their goal is to return magic to England. Norrell is a reclusive, secretive scholar who discredits the magic of the old Raven King, Strange is a more daring, practical magician, tutored by Norrell, but who disagrees with Norrell's principles. Two talented and clever men... no, nothing is going to go wrong at all.Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell is not for the faint hearted. Besides the daunting size of this monstrous tome, the pace of the novel is also rather slow. In fact, part 1 of the novel seems irrelevant until part 3. Impatient readers, such as the one who gave the copy I bought to the second hand book shop only after having read 30 pages, might not appreciate that. A lot seems superfluous. But, there is another way of viewing this very detailed tale. This is a book one lives in. It is filled with characters of interest, and I enjoyed how characters that I initially thought were unnecessary, decorative dressing turned out to be relevant and interesting. The plot was very finely constructed, with the detail and precision of the Harry Potter series (a comparison I couldn't help making as there were names in common in the books, and of course the whole 'magic in England' thing).
But. As much as I enjoyed the story, and even though I am glad that I read it, I do feel that it was a bit too drawn out for my liking. I have never considered myself an impatient reader, but there were parts in this one where I did skim some sections so that I could get on with the story.
I would recommend this one to adult readers (because of the pace, not because of adult scenes) who enjoy very loose historical fiction and fantasy. This is not high fantasy though.
I gave this one 4 stars on Goodreads.
It is the 64th book I have read for the 2015 TBR Pile Reading challenge.
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