Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

[Listener]

I give it a 5 (out of 10).

The characters are extremely well-developed, and toward the end, the dramatic tension is there.  Unfortunately, for a 700-page book, I need more than a one-or-two-page climax to be satisfied.

The ideas are also interesting.

Almost too much detail, overall.

I know it got a lot of good buzz from Neil Gaiman, who I like, but it's not, in my opinion, good enough in terms of readability to be a book of the year (I believe it was Time's BOTY). 

One interesting point:  very little discussion of the actual spells, but you still enjoy the magic nonetheless.

Takes WAY too long for the action to get started.

[dc]

I understand where you're coming from, and agree about the action taking too long to develop, but I read the book in a different way, so I guess I wasn't looking for the action.  I enjoyed the rewrite of history she did, and was reading it as a sort of historical novel.

[Listener]

I understand where you're coming from, and agree about the action taking too long to develop, but I read the book in a different way, so I guess I wasn't looking for the action.  I enjoyed the rewrite of history she did, and was reading it as a sort of historical novel.

I definitely appreciated the historical stuff.  It's just that as a fantasy novel it needed to have more stuff happen more quickly.  Like, in the beginning, when Norrell first shows his stuff... that was the last real bit of action for a while, and that took several chapters of boringness to get to.