I loved the footnotes. I think I see the HP for grown-ups in the sense that HP a lot of the characters that you've mentioned might not so much float in children's lit, which is where HP definately started, even if it's headed elsewhere. The worldbuilding is different, but both are complete worlds, even if this one is based more on history than HP.

I should go look for Arabella-centric fic. I liked her.

I think people are misunderstanding the Potter-for-adults thing. It's not saying that they're similar verses, but that JS&MN would, pre-Potter, have been released as the YA novel it obviously is, and shelved next to Susan Cooper or Joan Aiken (Wolves of Willoughby Chase is the book it reminded me of most). But the whole Potter phenomenon - and particularly the (stupid) trope of wrapping kids books in adult covers so people won't be ashamed on the tube - was so successful that JS&MN skipped the kids release and went straight mainstream.

t JS&MN would, pre-Potter, have been released as the YA novel it obviously is,

I take it you haven't actually read the book.

Not to rain on anyone's parade, but Clarke's said in interviews that she's planning more books in the same world but not a direct sequel. The ending we've got is ... well, the ending we've got. I liked it quite a lot, btw, but I'm told I'm odd.

If you want more Clarke, you might want to look for her short stories, which are all roughly in the same style--her first story, "The Ladies of Grace Adieu," is even referenced glancingly in JS&MN. I think most or all of them have ended up in the Datlow&Windling Year's Best Fantasy & Horror.

Yeah, I had a suspicion that that was all there was. I'm not altogether sure how I feel about that.

The ending we've got is ... well, the ending we've got. I liked it quite a lot, btw, but I'm told I'm odd.

I think it's a good and true ending that makes me sad.

What Katie said

Yeah, I've read half of it. What's your point?

That it's not in any way, shape, or form a young adult novel.

Well, there's no objective way to define a YA novel, but - to me - it reads like one. As I say, it reminded me of Joan Aiken more than anyone else, although John Masefield is another reference point. Put it this way, if you gave me Northern Lights and JS&MN blind and told me one had been published for children and one for adults I'd not be able to guess which was which. That, in itself, isn't a criticism of Norris, just an observation.

I didn't like the book - I thought her prose was mannered and smug, and she couldn't construct a proper sense of period, and I got so bored in the Venice section that I never picked it up again - but that's not because it was a kid's book, it's cos it wasn't a very good kid's book.

I agree it's not a very good kids' book because it's not a kids' book. Which is neither a defense nor an insult; I love many YA books, including Joan Aiken's. I wouldn't call it a mystery novel either, which is no reflection on what I think of mystery novels.

It has sentences with fairly complicated and mannered syntax, it's deliberately aping old-fashioned history textbooks, and its protagonists are a middle-aged man and a full-grown adult whose concerns don't easily translate to the concerns of children or even teenagers. That is, where its protagonist isn't entirely intangible, since I think the people who say the protagonist of the book is really the history of English magic have a point.

It would never be published as a YA novel because there's nothing in it to appeal to what publishers consider the YA audience.

If you'd said the publishers called it "Harry Potter with magic" because it otherwise wouldn't have done any better than novels published as adult fantasy or science fiction, I'd have no quarrel with you. I think it's exceptional (Jo Walton was right when she said it seemed to come out of an alternate history where Hope Mirlees and Lord Dunsany rather than J.R.R. Tolkien wrote the foundational novel of twentieth-century fantasy), but it's an exceptional work that fits perfectly well into the field of fantasy.