![]() ![]() When a second magician presents himself to Mr Norrell as a pupil it seems everything is going splendidly. The fashionable people of London are delighted by such a novelty, while the government see in him an opportunity to gain advantage in the war against Napoleon. That is, until Mr Norrell makes himself known as the only practical magician in England, and possibly the world. Not since the disappearance of the Raven King – a legendary magician who once ruled the North – and his successors have there been any true magicians. In Clarke’s alternative nineteenth-century England, magic is considered a lost art. But this is far too simplistic a description for what is actually a lengthy, beautiful, meandering tale of magic and ambition and rivalry and friendship, told over the span of a decade and often focusing on subplots and minor characters as much as on its two main protagonists. Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell is, ostensibly, a tale of two magicians named Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell. However, I recently came to realise that I might be the only person in existence who has a problem with the book, and so resigned myself to give it another go. I remembered little about the book, except that I quite enjoyed it at first but found that it soon became dry and laborious. These are all words I certainly didn’t use when I first attempted to read Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell a few years ago, finally abandoning it around the 600-page mark. ![]()
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