Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Grisham freely admits in the preface to "A Time to Kill" that it is his first book and is a little long winded and slow at times. This one needs a similar disclaimer. I get the sense that Clarke could tell a good story. This book in fact actually contains a good story, it just gets lost in and amongst the 782 pages. Some general comments: Someone complained this book had no magic. I think they meant no "lightning bolt, wizards battling" type magic. Actually, it has lots of magic, and that is it's biggest problem - it is "god-like mountain moving" type magic. For magic having been gone from England, it sure came back in a big way. The charcoal illustrations in the book are quite pleasing and fitting in style to the book/story. The idea that a fue words written in quasi-old english style brings a feeling of periud writing to the book is lostt on me. I could shew (actual word used throughout the book) you examples, but you'd probably quit reading my revuew. As you can tell fromme this paragraph it can be pretty annoiying. I'm torn on the footnotes. There are a lot of lengthy footnotes throughout. Though they really don't advance the story, they do add to the historical novel feel of the book. Funniest review here in Amazon: the person who claimed they sell it in shrinkwrap because no one would buy it if they scanned a few pages in the store - based on the writing style and footnotes it is hard to argue with that logic. In reading reviews on this book here on Amazon, I am struck with the idea that Mr. Norrell has placed a spell on the review section also. Amazingly, the percentage of people who find the 1 and 2 star reviews useful is very low, yet even the most information-less 4 or 5 star review is found to be very useful. Well, if you've read my rambling diatribe to this point, perhaps this book if for you. As for me, I only finished it because I was mildly interested in how it ended (thus 2 stars instead of 1) and the fact I took it out of shrink wrap and started it before my wife - for all the grief that caused I sure as heck wasn't going to not read the whole thing.