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Posting a reply to: Re: Pick & Mix 2019 challenge

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[QUOTE]dustydigger - 2019-04-28  11:18 AM

Of course,the major news in March was that I FINALLY finished Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell!!!!
I will give credit to Clarke's skill in embedding magic into a realistic setting and time frame,and her description of landscape,especially magical places. and the weather, are excellent. But the characters are cardboard,I didn't care or like any of them except perhaps Mrs Strange.I liked the little vignettes highlighting Mr and Mrs Strange's rather charming and rather touching relationship,then she was disposed of summarly by the plot! 
The language,purportedly Austenesque,is all over the place IMO. Some of the scenes between the fops Lascelles and Drawlight were strongly reminiscent of Congreve's Way of the World,(1700) then turned rather Victorian.(which era didn't start till 1837. For some reason many many reviews place the book as Victorian - over 20 years too early),often there is no particular language at all,with just some deliberately archaic spellings to try to make things look historical. 
But the pace was tediously slow,there were too many diversions,and I never did see an overarching theme or reason for the book as a whole. If you are ambitious enough to produce a work of pseudo scholarship (all those footnotes!),I think it needs to have some real strong theme there,and I never saw it!Perhaps that magic is not a good thing? Hardly worth 850 pages. 
Sorry,not my cup of tea. 
I wonder if many of those people who adored it just felt relieved that here was something of literary weight and scholarship,to counteract the rather plebian (to academics)Harry Potter books.and equating it will Austen and Dickens is way overestimating its worth IMO 
But here has to be something that made the book win 4 major awards and be nominated for four others. I seem to be too dim to see why! lol.
Anyhoo,free at last,and that made 64/67 Hugos,and 52/54 Nebulas completed! :laugh:[/QUOTE]

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dustydigger

Posted 2019-04-28 11:18 AM (#20808 - in reply to #19521)
Subject: Re: Pick & Mix 2019 challenge

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Of course,the major news in March was that I FINALLY finished Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell!!!!
I will give credit to Clarke's skill in embedding magic into a realistic setting and time frame,and her description of landscape,especially magical places. and the weather, are excellent. But the characters are cardboard,I didn't care or like any of them except perhaps Mrs Strange.I liked the little vignettes highlighting Mr and Mrs Strange's rather charming and rather touching relationship,then she was disposed of summarly by the plot!
The language,purportedly Austenesque,is all over the place IMO. Some of the scenes between the fops Lascelles and Drawlight were strongly reminiscent of Congreve's Way of the World,(1700) then turned rather Victorian.(which era didn't start till 1837. For some reason many many reviews place the book as Victorian - over 20 years too early),often there is no particular language at all,with just some deliberately archaic spellings to try to make things look historical.
But the pace was tediously slow,there were too many diversions,and I never did see an overarching theme or reason for the book as a whole. If you are ambitious enough to produce a work of pseudo scholarship (all those footnotes!),I think it needs to have some real strong theme there,and I never saw it!Perhaps that magic is not a good thing? Hardly worth 850 pages.
Sorry,not my cup of tea.
I wonder if many of those people who adored it just felt relieved that here was something of literary weight and scholarship,to counteract the rather plebian (to academics)Harry Potter books.and equating it will Austen and Dickens is way overestimating its worth IMO
But here has to be something that made the book win 4 major awards and be nominated for four others. I seem to be too dim to see why! lol.
Anyhoo,free at last,and that made 64/67 Hugos,and 52/54 Nebulas completed!

Edited by dustydigger 2019-04-28 11:27 AM

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