Here's my short review on it. It isn't Tolkien-esque, but it's great. In fact, I point out in the review that it's better than Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle.

FAQWife liked Jonathan Strange.

That's all I got.

t pimps Discworld

Not new, but sounds right up his alley, book-wise. So, I suppose, he may well have read them already.

Well, Thud is the newest in the series, and it's newer than Jonathan Strange. I haven't read it yet, though, so I don't know how well it would work stand-alone.

That's why I'm leaning more towards relatively new stuff. I haven't been to his apartment in over a year, and really haven't talked to him in nearly that long, so I'm not too sure exactly what he's into right now. I figure he has the DVDs that he wants, and being the music geek he is, I'm sure he's got all the CDs possible, so books are about my only option.

Jonathan Strange might win the Nebula this year. I am avoiding Corwood's review, as I haven't yet finished the book. DH finished it today and was disappointed with the way it ended (NFI), but so far I can heartily recommend it myself.

The Bujold Chalion series are also really fun.

Kate, the Jonathan Strange one, what is that about, and is it really Tolkien-esque?

As Corwood notes, it isn't really Tolkein-esque, except that they're both Big Fat Fantasy novels that draw heavily (though in very different ways) on English/Northern European myths and fairy tales to create rich and vivid histories. Stylistically, I think Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell is much closer to Dickens, in that it's a long, sprawling, episodic story told through the interactions of a large cast of characters, some strange, some funny, some poignant, but all vibrant.

The plot concerns the friendship and rivalry between two English magicians during the Napoleonic Wars, and their attempts to revive the tradition of English magic. If that sounds dry and boring, well, I thought so too, which is why I put off reading it for so long despite the raves from my friends and people I trust; but when I finally started it, I was pulled in almost immediately. It was such a pleasurable reading experience that I kept having to stop and read back over the previous paragraph or page because it was just so good.

DH finished it today and was disappointed with the way it ended (NFI),

What does NFI mean? I was also a little let down by the ending, but I think that's partially because I didn't want it to end!

I've managed to get about 50 pages into Jonathan Strange, but it really hasn't grabbed me, and I kept drifting off.

I am avoiding Corwood's review, as I haven't yet finished the book.

His review is less spoilery than anything anyone's said here about it.

He also says that it took him a few chapters before it grabbed him.

NFI is "no further information;" I've asked him not to elucidate as I don't want to be spoiled for the ending. He said, "Well, that's not likely," which I took to mean that it doesn't actually end.

I think the style is Austen, rather than Dickens, but mostly I'm in the "didn't grab me" crowd. It's started to grow on me now that I'm dedicating my reading time to it; when I had other books as choices I would easily put down Strange as I thought it dragged in places.

I felt that JS&MN was sort of a mashup of Dickens, Austen, and Pamela Dean; or at least that's what it felt like to me. Much of magical plot is actually told by implication rather than explicitly, which is a very Dean-ish thing to do. Or Patricia McKillip.

I read the entire thing in about four days (I was home sick), and enjoyed it immensely. I did think it dragged a bit, about 3/4 of the way through (the whole Vienna sequence went on a bit too long), but overall I just really liked it. It's very much its own kind of thing: despite all the evident influences, I can't think of anything else it really reminds me of.

If a reader doesn't like Dickens and Austen, though, I suspect they wouldn't it. And maybe even if they did.