“I was told you were dead!” he cried.
“I was sure you would be.”
There was a pause. Both men felt faintly embarrassed. The ranks of dead and wounded stretched away upon all sides as far as the eye could see. Simply being alive at that moment seemed, in some indefinable way, ungentlemanly.
In 2020 and 2021, I dove headlong into fantasy and scifi. As the pandemic raged, I couldn’t tear myself away from magicians, witchers, mistborns, kandra, grisha, alien invasions, teenagers trapped in a dystopian future, you name it. So, when I came across a gently-used copy of Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, I snapped it up. Sure, it was a bit different than what I was used to reading, but hey, the best-of lists had not led me astray so far.
Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell follows the story of two magicians who take it upon themselves to bring magic back to England. Magic has never left England, but it has fallen out of popularity and is feared as a result of the Raven King, the most powerful magician in history. As the two magicians come into their power, they work well together until they don’t. As they grow and learn, their priorities diverge, with one focusing on how magic can help England defeat the French and influence global politics, and the other pushing the boundaries in the pursuit of knowledge and the more obvious and practical applications of magic. The consequences of the choices they make in pursuit of their personal motivations results in dire consequences for their friends and loved ones.
So all of that sounds exciting except it’s not. I stuck with this book, the funny and interesting chapters pulling me along just enough to help me grind through the political chapters with the Duke of what’s-it and Lord who-gives-a-fuck. The funniest part of the entire book involves a lesson in why you should not mix untested spells with dead enemy soldiers.
The good: It was a silly but dense read. At times I found the stories in the footnotes more entertaining than anything either of the magicians were doing.
The bad: It is not a world I wish to return to. The most interesting characters ended up dead, entrapped, driven mad, or left on the side of the road metaphorically, lost among the winding and utterly boring lives of the titular magicians.