The book is set in an alternate 19th-century Britain, during the Napoleonic Wars. The story is based on the premise of magic returning to England after hundreds of years of desuetude, and the tumultuous relationship between two magicians of the time. It incorporates historical events and people into its fictional alternate reality. Historical figures encountered in the novel include the Duke of Wellington, Lord Byron and King George III. The novel, written in a pastiche of Jane Austen and Charles Dickens' literary styles, uses quasi-archaic spelling for several words (such as shew, chuse, connexion, sopha, scissars, headach, and surprize) and gives all street names hyphenated with only one capital letter (e.g. Regent-street, Hanover-square).The book is interspersed with hundreds of footnotes which reference a number of fictional books including magical scholarship and biographies, and which provide a detailed backstory. Many pages of the book contain more footnote text than main body text.
1984 - George Orwell
Now finished Misery by Stephen King and moved onto Needful Things. The story seems a little bit odd, but then it is King.Misery was fantastic, a highly recommended book. Towards the end I was truly on the edge of my seat, I fell off at one point.