This is a really crazy, absolutely remarkable first tome (and “tome” it is, weighing in at a good 800 pages). The blurbs on the cover compare it to The Lord of the Rings (which it is in scope alone) and Harry Potter (well, there is magic in it…). Jeremy said it read like Jane Austen, but with magicians. There’s something of the immersiveness of Neal Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle, something Dickensian in its sprawling portrayal of England, and something captivatingly Grimm-like in the darkness of its vision of magical goings-on.

But ultimately, the book is all Susanna Clarke’s own. It starts with a small meeting of fusty old magicians in York and gradually expands to take in London, Venice, the Napoleonic Wars and the realm of Faerie. The heart of the story is the rivalry between two practicing English magicians, but racing alongside the main plot are a number of different, creepier storylines involving shadowy medieval kings and elusive, incomprehensible magical beings—fairies. And despite the book’s Regency/Victorian setting, the fairies here in no way resemble the happy winged creatures of Victorian fantasy, just as the magic in the novel is far from the benign whimsy of flying broomsticks.

Instead, there’s smoke and mirrors (lots of mirrors), envy and greed, capricious nastiness and apparent madness. There’s a distinctly sinister current running through the book, a current which, by the end of the tale, has coalesced into a literal cloud of eternal darkness. There is also, I should say, a good dollop of humor and charm, so it’s not all grim. It is long, and it is wordy, but it also isn’t really like anything else I’ve read before—and that’s a great thing. I really look forward to seeing what else Susanna Clarke has in store for us in the future.

Further reading…