ABSOLUTELY AMAZING BOOK. But it is really hard to get into. It took me about 200 pages to just get interested, and at that point I was more determined to finish than actually WANTED to finish....until I got to about page 300. The first 300 weren't horrible, but it was slightly drawn out, and i reluctantly say boring b/c it doesnt accurately represent the rest of the book. If you are willing to put in the time you WILL NOT BE DISAPPOINTED. I could not put this book down, and was extremely satisfied when I had finished.

My husband purchased this book for me after he read a review that raved about it. He went to a great deal of trouble to track the book down and get it for me for Christmas. If he hadn't gone to all the trouble, I would have chunked this in the trash after 2 or 3 pages. More than 800 pages later, I felt like I'd been trapped in a Seinfeld episode (not much happening, but spending a lot of time talking about it) without the laughs. Unfortunately, he bought 2 of her books for me so I also read the book of short stories - The Ladies of Grace Adieu and Other Stories - it was marginally better as the stories were short.

I long to write a long and rapturous review about this magnificent & wonderful book. But I won't.

However, I will tell you that I was completely enamored with 'Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell". I fell under its spell, absorbed in a world of alternate history, comedy of manners and dark, shadowy magic. Comparisons to Harry Potter is misleading.

I'm amazed that some readers here found it tedious and boring. To be sure, it's a very lengthy tome. But it's like a long awaited vacation to an exotic, faraway land, it goes by amazingly fast. Indeed, I felt a keen loss when I was done.

I love JRR Tolkien, JK Rowling, and Jane Austen. However, I feel Susanna Clarke has topped them all.

Susanna Clarke is the type of writer who chooses to write an essay when only one word answer was asked of her, I applaude her for the rich and deep history that she created for the characters in this novel, but it was too much.

When trying to read this book i constantly found myself re-reading the same passages over and over again. The book would move from slow and dragging, to vastly entertaining. I wanted to finish reading this book, but in the end the only was i could was by listening to the the audio commentary.

Many times with a novel i find myself dissapointed when reaching the end, wanting the story to continue. However with the novel i was dissapointed with how Ms. Clark managed to take such an interesting story and characters and then proceed to kill me with boredom.

I appreciated the work and time that Ms. Clarke took in creating the characters with footnotes refering to fictional works of magic, but if you really must insist on reading this book, i suggest you save yourself the heartache and get the audiobook.

I don't quite understand where people are getting the thought that this novel is "Harry Potter for grown ups" and am really amazed by the sheer number that agree with it.

"Grown up" how exactly? The prose? For all intents and purposes this is a Victorian novel transported into modern day. Nothing about it reads like a modern fantasy novel that delves into realism and a character's mind set, instead we get archaic ideas of a narrating character that is talking second hand, never getting to know anyone up front but only through the lens of observation. Harry Potter on the other side is modern, Harry is our guide, Harry is with us almost every step of the way, we get Harry.

And the Victorian emulation of "Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell" doesn't stop with narration either. The whole novel comes right out of the era (on purpose) and Clarke's characters live in a very platonic world where every character must get married to have sex and then its something that is never mentioned, so only God knows how children are made. But of course, since none of the couples have children, maybe sex goes beyond never being mentioned and is actually never being done. Even Harry Potter has snogging, but not poor Mr. Strange. As for Mr. Norrell, its this reviewers opinion that he could have used a good snog.

Violence? Death? Very little violence in "JS and Mr. N" even during the great war with Napoleon, though some secondary characters do die in that war, but no one you grown completely attached to like what happened in Harry Potter books 5 and 6. So please, lets put the fallacy to death. This is not "Harry Potter for grown ups". Harry Potter is actually the more adult and modern of the two.

So what is Susanna Clarke's award winning novel? It's a Victorian periodical told in Victorian narrator with Victorian characters that don't think about naughty things at all, and like many Victorian periodicals it is longer than it probably needs to be with certain characters disappearing and popping back up. Biggest though, it has no PLOT. Much like Stephanson's "Baroque Cycle", it has many different plots that come one after another, but no main overarching plot.

So if you don't like the Victorian old fashioned style of novel with a narrator, stay away. If you do, you'll probably get into it. If you need a plot, don't stay away, RUN AWAY. This novel wanders, just like Dickens did back when he had readers sending him letters, asking if a certain character could come back.

Final Thought: As far as me, I enjoyed certain parts, the end especially, but a lot could have been cut from it, and dear God how I wish it would have actually been "Harry Potter for adults". I'll always wonder how much better it could have been if it had been realistic, with sex and violence, and dark themes and even more, what it would have been like to live inside the head of Jonathan Strange.