this book has been unfairly advertised
How unusual is this book?
I think this book has been unfairly advertised in order to hopefully grab people who enjoyed the Harry Potter books.  when I was given this behemoth of a novel to read, I was told I'd like it because "its a mix of Harry Potter and Jane Austen."  Its an entirely different kind of novel than Harry Potter; and the only connection to a Jane Austen novel would be that its set in old England and uses old English ("chuses" for example).  That said, the writing style is more in line with Jane Austen than some of the modern authors.  But, I wouldn't call this book Harry Potter done by Jane Austen.  Its also a fairly hard book to get into which is highly different from the pickup and readability of Harry Potter.I don't even want to talk about what the book is about and my recommendation is to not read the book jacket because it basically tells you the entire story.  Strange and Norrell tells the story of a magician, Norrell, who wants to bring magic back to England under his own terms.  But it doesn't start out like that.  It starts out with totally different characters who consider themselves magicians but don't practice.  Then it becomes a different novel about Norrell and his personal idealogies...then it involves Strange and tells his whole life history up to this moment before showing his ideologies.Part of the problem with the novel in its early pages is that it has a ton of beginnings.  It feels like the story will be about one thing but then introducing someone else gives another beginning to the story.  Its filled with too many false starts.  It also spends a large portion of the book setting up what will unfold in the last two hundred pages; in fact the majority of the story dictated in the book flap happens in the last half of the novel.  Fans of very pickup and read novels will probably be turned off early on.  Its a shame because this novel is very rich.It has a lot of subtext involving the time period (1800s) that fans/history buffs of the time period will enjoy.  I hate to call it a historical fiction, but it closely resembles this but with a fantastical twist (namely magic).  Susanna Clarke spends a good deal of time describing the time period, the setting, the characters, their motivations, etc that you really do get a good feeling for the characters.  She does a good job developing characters that will definitely have an idealogical and moral confrontation.  Clarke does tend to lean on cliches every now and then, what with the yes-men surrounding Norell and their tireless bickering on who's better.  Its handled deftly, but its still cliched at parts.My recommendation is that if you enjoy a quick read (and I don't mean page length) then I would just check this novel out.  If you are interested in devoting a good portion of your time to a novel that is thick with description, characterization and a plot that involves a ton of setup and involves a ton of characters that need to be introduced, then this is a good novel for you. 