Dr. Norrell and Jonathan Strange by Susanna Clarke

You just know that nothing really really bad is going to happen to anybody who is really talked about much. Plenty of people die but never anyone personalized. This makes the reading somewhat light. A lighthearted, cute story that I consider somewhat unambitious. You're never drawn in deep. Of course if you were, then the author must find a way to bring you back out. Which many fail at. Steven King in The Talisman and The Stand for example being such failures. Hobb's Fitz being a success.
G. Martin being an example of someone who really draws you in, really makes it real and does kill off main characters but whom instead of eventually failing to pull the reader back out appropriately seems to have decided to just never finish.

Clarke takes what I consider a far less ambitious route.

Yet I imagine there are reviews that gush about how original her story is, largely in part to the footnotes which are used to make this fantasy alternate history seem rich. It is inventive and enjoyable to read but nothing quite that outstanding. Ultimately an unambitious book.

The alternate fantasy history makes it much easier to have nuance in social interactions. It may not be impossible to have great nuance in social interactions in an utterly alien world but no good example comes to mind.

Bits of hero with an ace, I suppose it could be said to depend upon such. A hero who slowly develops his ace....

What I get here is alternate history of earth for easier high degree of nuance in social interactions and make sure to kill people that appear to be main characters. Along of course with injustice, and hero with an ace that is slowly developed.

Finished book 4 of JV Jones' Watcher of the Dead series. This was the best book of the series in that the preceding were too negative and this was more positive. Finally some very positive things are happening for Raina. Raif is now extremely powerful and even has a sex mate. Effie also has real power and her situation isn't so gruesome as it once was. I think actually that Mace was not even in book 4 at all??? He's been off at war.

The right level of injustice balanced against something positive, like the hope that results from aces up the sleeve, etc is not so easy to manage. It's understandable that things will look grimmer in the beginning and gradually become more positive. Such was the case with Rothfuss and his second book, and so on in these sorts of books.

Now starting Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke. Refreshing. Most would say it's on a higher level than the Jones series. Not really so though. The social norms are more complex, because it's only a slight variation of reality. If you're going to make an entirely new world with entirely different social norms, it's just too much to make them very complex. So then, the Sull for example end up way too crude, the only other way forward would be for Jones to do a better job at finding something in them that appeals to us humans instead of trying to emphasize that they're totally alien/foriegn.

One thing I dislike of Jones is that she has her characters using sayings occasionally that just don't belong. The world is not earth. Why would someone say "easy peasy"?