Jonathan Strange anticipation thread

[lucysnowe]

Thought I would start one as have just watched the full trailer here. Am so very exciting now!! Anyone else??

[SoupDragon]

Well, the book is brilliant. Very well-written, imaginative, and witty. I'm glad that the TV series is making this exceptional story accessible to those who haven't managed to get through the book

What patronising guff.

[CoteDAzur]

Always a pleasure to talk to you Soup

[SoupDragon]

Maybe you should stop stating your personal opinion as fact and following it up with patronising shit that implies people who didn't get the book are thick.

[SoupDragon]

I thought this would be a thread about the TV series and what it's like. I'll leave you to it.

[Pipbin]

I read the book when it first came out. DH has always been sniffy about the space the large hardback takes up on the shelf, but he is loving this.
I've forgotten most of the book now and I'm loving the series.

I'm sure that I have seen Lady Pole in something else though and I can't work out what. According to IMDb it's nothing I've seen.

Has any one read Ladies of Grace Adeiu?

[scandip]

I though it was Norrell rhyming with bell too.

I didn't read them as being sniffy or patronising Soup. It is a massive book. Not everyone can be arsed to read mahoosive books. It doesn't mean they're thick.

[CoteDAzur]

Exactly, scandip.

I have only seen the 1st episode of the TV series. I thought that it has a great atmosphere. Mr Norrell is perfect. The Gentleman With Thistle-Down Hair is brilliant although imho he should be less grave and more flippant. Jonathan Strange a bit less so, imho.

Personally, I found the TV adaptation lacking on two fronts:

• They haven't even attempted to do the book's footnotes, where at least half of the story is told. Footnotes are essential to setting the scene in the book, giving the background and talking at length about who Raven King was, his achievements, his faerie kingdom, poems written about him etc.
  

• The book's Victorian wit and humour does not come through at all. I'm referring to passages like this:
  

"And she was quite tolerable to look at, you say?", said Mr Lascelles.
"You never saw her?" said Drawlight. "Oh she was a heavenly creature. Quite divine. An angel."
"Indeed? And such a pinched-looking ruin of a thing now! I shall advise all the good-looking women of my acquaintance not to die" said Mr Lascelles.

or

"There was a distant connexion of Mr Norrell (on his mother's side) who had once made himself highly disagreeable to Mr Norrell by writing him a letter. To prevent such a thing ever occurring again, Mr Norrell had made this man a present of eight hundred pounds (which was what the man wanted), but I am sorry to say that this failed to suppress Mr Norrell's mother's relative, who was steeped in villainy, and he had written a second letter to mr Norrell in which he heaped thanks and praise upon his benefactor."

[lucysnowe]

It's true you miss the voice of the narrator but the thing is esp with the ones you quoted they are v. V. Austeny aren't they? Pretty much a pastiche. I think the adaptors wanted to get way from that. The adapt is wittyish but I agree isn't as acerbic as the novel (although Arabella gets some good lines). Clarke is v v oblique often which I like but that's hard to get across too.

[CoteDAzur]

Yes, I guess that tone is hard to get across. I can't excuse so easily the complete disappearance of the footnote section, though.

I realise there won't be footnotes on screen, but they could have given some of the background in dream-like recurring flashbacks about the Raven King, for example.

[Thurlow]

Still loving it. It's like someone went into my head and put the book on screen. I take back any reservations I had about Bertie Carvel and Charlotte Riley - particularly enjoyed the little "Arabella is not a three year old" line.

Agree a bit re the Gentleman. It's the echoey voice which is putting me off slightly, and also I agree with feeling that in the book he genuinely believed that Stephen, in particular, must be happy to have his attentions. But he looks absolutely perfect for the part.

I'm constantly smiling as a new scene appears and I remember which one it is. Adored the bit with the horses - a great way of quickly showing the difference between Strange and Norrell.

Though there are tiny bits I miss. But only probably because I have read the book too many times. Like when Strange does his magic in the mirror, in the book Clarke writes about him doing a funny little gesture with his arms. That always stuck in my mind and I wish they had kept it.

But overall it's fantastic. You can just tell that everyone involved adored this book and wants desperately to do it justice.

[Echocave]

I am alarmed that since a friend of mine compared magical scenes of Lost Hope with dry ice to a New Romantic pop video [shows age] that it's ruined it for me!

I love the Gentleman (although I imagined his hair as wispier!) but overall I'm finding it a bit leaden. Oh dear...

[lucysnowe]

I am enjoying Warren a bit more now I have seen more of him. And he is so very pale and fruity and smirky :)

I've just looked at the book again and the bit with the king comes a bit later (don't want to spoil anyone who hasn't read the book) so hopefully it will still be in!

They have got through quite a lot already and according to a Q&A the last ep only covers about 50 pages so I think they are going to cover the last bits in a lot more detail.

Faerieland was a bit new romantic wasn't it? Tricky because it has to be dreamlike but also actually happening.

On rewatch I really enjoyed this ep, it fitted together a lot better. SOOOO looking forward to Strange on the peninsula and the SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER zombies SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER

[Thurlow]

Oh, yes, those were my favourite. They better keep them in. And the Goya painting.

The one bit I'm desperately waiting for is, as I mentioned earlier, when ^^ is at that party and gets thrown out.

[PolkadotsAndMoonbeams]

Was it As the World Falls Down by any chance Echo?

[Badgerwife]

Can someone clarify a bit for me? DH and I are loving the TV show but now, having read this thread, I'm really confused. Although I read the book yeas ago, I can't remember a thing about it and I assumed that the fairy you guys are calling The Gentleman was in fact the Raven King. Are they two different beings then?

[Echocave]

Ha ha ha Polka spot on!

[Thurlow]

They are two different people.

The show is trying its best to get it across but it's really hard without the footnotes. The Raven King ruled northern England for 300 years and made England famous for magic. But then he vanished, and magic died out. He had a lot to do with faeries - and Faery, the realm where they live - but he was actually human.

[lucysnowe]

Yes I can see how it's possible to suspect the Gentleman is the Raven King from the adaptation actually. We are never told exactly who he is but he is some kind of faery aristocrat. The Raven King is actually human but brought up by faeries.

[JeanneDeMontbaston]

I'm struggling too, and agree with soup.

And sorry, cote, but honestly, it can't be such a great book if you loved it and still think it is 'Victorian'!

It's set during the Napoleonic Wars. I read it once, and I still noticed that because it's a major plot point (and gone over with detail). It's told from a slightly later perspective, but still very clearly attempting a simplified Austen pastiche, not a later Victorian style.

What I found most jarring was the music - it reminds me too much of Harry Potter. And while I know lots of people see this as more of an adult novel than I do, even I don't think that it was appropriate to make it so YA-accessible as that. It takes away all the real spookiness of it, which is a pity.

But, it is still very pretty, so I'm not about to stop watching.

[Trills]

When I was reading the book I thought for a while that the Gentleman was actualy the Raven King.

[JeanneDeMontbaston]

I didn't, but I do remember assuming that the golden age magicians were going to have a much bigger role than they did - I don't know why, but I thought the first couple of chapters would be a prologue to us going right back to them.

[lucysnowe]

Like Harry Potter it's such a big universe there are loads of other stories that could be featured in more depth. I love all the stuff about the aureates and argentines (sp?). My favourite Clarke character is Alessandro Simonelli from the short stories, the half human half faery vicar. I could watch a whole series about him, he's soo intriguing.

[Igneococcus]

Did nobody watch last night?
I jumped out of my skin when my lounge door creaked open during the scene when Stephen Black is at the door with Arabella and he hears the bell ring. It was the cat coming downstairs with impeccable timing.

[Trills]

Was anyone else briefly disappointed that Wellington was not Alan Rickman?

[Thurlow]

I thought he looked like Alan Rickman too!

Still loving it. Glad they kept in the Neapolitans (randomly, I always thought that was a great chapter name, "17 Dead Neapolitans") and they were suitably creepy.

I always have lines from the book that they haven't been able to keep in running through my head, which I quite enjoy. Like when they realise that the dead Neapolitans have already learned to speak a dialect of hell, the book says "They have learnt it very quickly," said Lord Wellington. "They have only been dead three days." He approved of people doing things promptly and in a businesslike fashion.

Has anyone else read this several times before? Each time I read (and now watch) it I get more and more convinced that Childermass is actually Clarke's hero.