The ending, oh, the ending is hard to bear, and it's important to remember that in the films the ending is hard not to fast forward. 

Merry and Pippin, who have been our viewpoint characters the whole time, really, come into their own here. They mature, they suffer, they endure loss and fear and gain the respect of their betters. Aragorn, if anything, becomes less interesting the more he grows in stature and nobility, and it's always nice when a hobbit calls him Strider. Gimli and Legolas, oh their blossoming friendship was treated poorly n the film wasn't it? And Frodo and Sam: the hardest test of all is to find the strength to keep plodding through ash and fire for days and days and days, and we feel almost every mile and every hunger pang.

But really, nearly half the book takes place when it' s all over. The long slow journey home. The Scouring. The trip to the Grey Havens. A happy, happy ending, and damn you if you don't blub up. Then, of course, you read the appendices and that time-line at the end that includes the fates of the Fellowship after the War and it's sob, sob, sob. 

I loved this as a child. As an adult I'm almost shocked to discover that it was worthy of my love, and still is. I hope to return to Middle earth again some time. Maybe next year.

Jan 2022 - and finished the audio version. The very final bit in the appendices with Legolas and Gimli remains perfect.

Dec 23 - listened again, lovely. 

This is real favourite of mine, and it's the third time I've read it and I devoured it. It combines a crisp eighteenth century novel with magic in a brilliantly seamless way, as the gentlemen magicians go about trying to impose values of rational thought and practical application to the restoration of British magic, denying or overwriting or suppressing the historical roots of that magic deep in Britain's folkloric past, far too dangerous and difficult to control for their liking - or at least for the liking of Mr Norrell. Mr Strange's sympathies lean elsewhere. Secret histories lurk in casual asides and old legends and tales and footnotes. Female magic is particularly suppressed, and if Mr Norrell has is way, it will remain so. Drawing room dramas, Napoleonic warfare, dreadful enchantments enduring under everyone's noses and the steadily growing influence of the Raven King kept me hooked, but it's the brilliantly drawn characters that compelled me to keep reading long after my poor old eyes had started to boil like eggs in the pot.

Edit 2020 - listened to the audio and it was lovely BUT the pronunciation of 'daoine sidhe' is a violent act of colonial imperialistic ecocide.

2021 - listened to it again, despite violent colonial ecocide. Like slipping into a warm bath.

Dec 2023 - listened again. 

Torrid tale of murder, mystery, and hauntings set in a rural British village where Merrily Watkins is the new vicar, having been introduced to the charming community via an effort to revive a wassailing tradition that ends rather bloodily. Things don't get much better, though, what with being plunged headfirst into a controversial play to be performed in the church, but they do get tense, atmospheric and suspenseful.

In the dying dyas of WW II a Venetian fisherman rescues a girl from a lagoon, She's on the run from the SS, he's trying to palm her off to partisans to get her to safety, but things ain't that simple. Smoothly written, romantic, albeit squicky older-man-with-teeneger, adventurous, has lots of fish in it.

Skipped a few in the series to get to this one, largely because I just couldn't get my hands on them, but here the village is being flooded, an archaeological dig is being televised, a notorious atheoist is in hiding, a head is discovered in some ruins and Merrily is sort of the glue that holds all these things together as the various plot threads develop. I confess I'm treating these as rather light very casual listens, even though they are quite dark and dour and a bit miserable, so I'm doing the equivalent of skimming bits, but it is very good and deserves better from me, but also I'm a rebel and nobody tells me what to do.

Merrily versus the SAS

Pagans versus fundamentalists versus Merrily but also MURDER.

Merrily versus Gypsy ghosts and MURDER.

[edit] | Merrily versus books and Nazis and MURDER! Me versus reading a series in consecutive order!

Merrily versus Morris Dancers. And MURDER.