An interesting thing seems to be happening: Susanna Clarke is coming back. Two books influenced by her unique blend of real-world history and strange magick and Faerie are coming out this year: H.G. Perry's A Declaration of the Rights of Magicians (which will be the first book of a duology) and Alix Harrow's The Once and Future Witches. (There may well be others with Strange & Norrell influences that I don't know about.)
I read Harrow's The Ten Thousand Doors of January earlier this year and adored it. I formed an unusually strong emotional connection to it and it brought me to tears more then any other book I've ever read... which, naturally, means that it's one of my favorite books.
Perry's book is the unfamiliar one. I've never read any of her work before, indeed, I'd never heard of her before. I love the title. A Declaration of the Rights of Magicians. Instant ambition. It stakes out a relationship with history's human rights documents.
Yet I can't help but feel I'm being set up, that I'm being deceived by a title of such overt ambition, such self-aware ambition, that I can't help but be disappointed by whatever I end up reading. They say don't judge a book by its cover, and perhaps the same is true of titles. I will hold judgment until I have read it... but still. I have reservations.
It goes deeper then a handful of books influenced by her, though. Clarke herself is literally returning. Piranesi, her newest novel, comes out in September, and it promises to be strange and unique and quite unlike Strange & Norrell was. Suffice to say I am thrilled.
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