Susanna Clarke’s Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell feels less like reading a fantasy novel and more like discovering a forgotten piece of English history that somehow slipped between the cracks of reality. The achievement of it is almost absurd. Clarke doesn’t simply build a world; she builds the illusion of scholarship around that world so convincingly that, by the end, the Raven King feels as historically inevitable as Napoleon.

At the heart of this story is Stasya, a young woman who stands apart from her village—not because she’s been banished, but simply because she doesn’t quite fit. She’s the sort who listens before speaking, walks the woods rather than gossiping at the local pub, and, perhaps most notably, understands animals in a way that unsettles her neighbours.