Didn’t see that coming did you? No, I still haven’t picked up Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell again. It’s still pretty daunting, and I think I’m switching to mass market paperbacks. They’re smaller and more difficult to read, but they slide into my briefcase and can be read on the train to and from work. That’s a winner.
As for this one, my stepbrother Jonathan was reading Wizard & Glass and the beach, and we got to talking about Stephen King’s Dark Tower series. I mentioned that I just could see myself starting a big book series right now. Jonathan assured me that I could read The Gunslinger and stop there with a sense of fulfilment… that it didn’t have a cliffhanger. It doesn’t, although it does obviously continue in the next book. I’m going to pick up The Drawing of the Three, because I really enjoyed this. If you decide to read it, be sure to pick up the “Revised and Expanded Throught” version and read the two Forwards, both by the author. They’re great, and give you a good background into what King was trying to accomplish. This series has been called his “Lord of the Rings” and he addresses that. That he loved LotR and wanted to write his own, but couldn’t at first because if he did, he would have just written Tolkein’s story and not his own. It wasn’t until he saw Clint Eastwood in The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly that his vision crystallized.
The book isn’t perfect, bit it is intriguing and hints at a greater world. I guess I have to give it a grade, so I’ll give it a B+.
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