Mark T. (CapnCurry) reviewed on 7/28/2007 + 7 more book reviews

Helpful Score: 1

This is one of the best books I've read lately, but I can see where it's not for everyone. It's a heavy read, not just for the length but because there's a lot of details to absorb and a lot of footnotes to help provide those details. While the footnotes can occasionally slow down the reading of the main story - there's one heated exchange between several scholars where for several pages there's 1/6 page of dialog and 5/6 of footnotes - the upswing is that the book doesn't have to resort to characters explaining background to other characters. It feels like all the details of magic are things well-known, and the footnotes are just there to remind you.

This was an extremely pleasant read for me, but it probably helps if you're a fan of that old style of prose in which clarity of intention is favored over brevity of text. This could probably have been edited to half its length, but Clarke has a lot to say and a lot of interesting points of fact to share about her history of English magic, and I'm glad to have found this rare example of an author who can actually get away with publishing it all in one massive tome. Reads more like Twain than Salvatore, and to me that's a refreshing change of pace.

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