Astonished to find another practicing magician, Mr Norrell accepts Strange as a pupil. Strange thinks nothing of enduring the rigors of campaigning with Wellington’s army and doing magic on battlefields. Jonathan Strange is handsome, charming, and talkative-the very opposite of Mr Norrell.

Soon he is lending his help to the government in the war against Napoleon Bonaparte, creating ghostly fleets of rain-ships to confuse and alarm the French.Īll goes well until a rival magician appears. He goes to London and raises a beautiful young woman from the dead. They can only write long, dull papers about it, while fairy servants are nothing but a fading memory.īut at Hurtfew Abbey in Yorkshire, the rich, reclusive Mr Norrell has assembled a wonderful library of lost and forgotten books from England’s magical past and regained some of the powers of England’s magicians. But by the early 1800s they have long since lost the ability to perform magic. Norrell DescriptionĮnglish magicians were once the wonder of the known world, with fairy servants at their beck and call they could command winds, mountains, and woods. I’ve included book descriptions, readers’ ratings and summaries of positive and negative comments for each book below. On the other hand, if you’d like a quick summary, here’s a comparison chart. Here are 7 fantasy books set in Victorian London to read: Well, if you’re curious what stories like that exist, this post has a list for you. While authors have penned wonderful steampunk fantasy novels, futuristic ones, and more, what about fantasy books set in Victorian London in particular? Fantasy books set in medieval-inspired worlds are beloved, as well as well-known in the fantasy genre.

The infernal devices trilogy