Eruditorum Press

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Elizabeth Sandifer

About Elizabeth Sandifer

http://www.eruditorumpress.com

Elizabeth Sandifer created Eruditorum Press. She’s not really sure why she did that, and she apologizes for the inconvenience. She currently writes Last War in Albion, a history of the magical war between Alan Moore and Grant Morrison. She used to write TARDIS Eruditorum, a history of Britain told through the lens of a ropey sci-fi series. She also wrote Neoreaction a Basilisk, writes comics these days, and has ADHD so will probably just randomly write some other shit sooner or later. Support Elizabeth on Patreon.

Posts by Elizabeth Sandifer:

Saturday Incineration: A Review of Seeming’s Worldburners EP

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Fun fact: Despite the fact that Seeming is the single most WicDiv
band ever (no really), I have thus far failed utterly both at getting
Kieron Gillen to listen to Seeming and at getting Alex to read
The Wicked & The Divine.

The usual disclaimers when I talk about stuff made by Alex apply: he’s one of my closest friends, and there’s nothing on this record that I haven’t previously heard in various demos. That said, I do not like Seeming because I’m friends with the frontman and songwriter; I like Alex because he makes some of the best fucking music I have ever heard. Which is to say that this is an unabashedly partisan review, but an entirely sincere one.

Having gotten that out of the way: there’s a new Seeming record out. Entitled Worldburners, it’s a seven song EP backed by a veritable smorgasbord of remixes. It’s absolutely brilliant. You can get it, along with Seeming’s previous releases, including the sublime Madness and Extinction, here. There’s a video for the lead track, and everything is streamable for free at the link above:
As the track list suggests, this is a concept EP around the theme of fire, which is pretty much the perfect theme for a concept album: broad enough to allow for takes from wildly different perspective, but narrow enough to provide a meaningful sense of unity. But it’s an especially good theme for a Seeming record. Over the course of the year and change the band has been producing material, Alex developed a compelling sort of musical method – one defined by an uncompromisingly ruthless commitment to aesthetic extremism mixed with an equally ruthless commitment to the methodology of pop music.
Fire works well with this. On the one hand, it lets Alex (and co-conspirator Aaron Fuleki, the machine to Alex’s Florence) more fully unleash their goth/industrial roots with an unsparingly aggressive record. On the other, the connection from “fire” to “aesthetic extremism” is a very easy one. This is very much what it says on the tin: a record about lighting the fucking world on fire. It’s a record for anybody who reacted to that “some men just want to watch the world burn” line in The Dark Knight with “and what’s wrong with that?” Music for people who read Jack Graham’s brilliant essay in praise of villainy and punched the air.

The crown jewel is the title track, “Worldburners Unite,” offered both in the “Pandemic” mix that serves as the lead track and video and in the mix used on the 7″ vinyl single. The former trends to the goth/industrial roots, serving as a more straightforward continuation of the project begun with Madness and Extinction, while the latter is a rollicking piece of celtic punk with some seriously hardcore shredding bagpipes. It’s also just flat-out one of my favorite songs ever, which is probably why I’ve been using its first line, “see the tower through the trees give way to smoky memories,” as a Tumblr tag for over a year now, and why its second line was the title of the debut entry of the Super Nintendo Project.

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Dead Kings Walking Underground (The Last War in Albion Part 104: Grant Morrison’s Future Shocks)

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This is the final part of The Last War in Albion Chapter Eleven, focusing on Alan Moore’s The Ballad of Halo Jones, as well as the final part of The Last War in Albion Book One. An omnibus of all five parts is available on Smashwords. If you are a Kickstarter backer or a Patreon backer at $2 or higher per week, instructions on how to get your complimentary copy have been sent to you.

The Ballad of Halo Jones is available in a collected edition that can be purchased in the US or in the UK.

Previously in The Last War in Albion: Alan Moore decided to stop working for IPC and 2000 AD, but the magazine had an obvious replacement in the form of an up-and-coming Scottish writer named Grant Morrison

“The night before returning to America, I wandered into the desert and ate a ball of hashish I’d been given in Tibet. The ensuing vision transformed me. Wading through powdered history, I heard dead kings walking underground; heard fanfares sound through human skulls. Alexander had merely resurrected an age of Pharaohs. Their wisdom, truly immortal, now inspired me.” – Alan Moore, Watchmen

Figure 822: The revelation of obscene
alien graffiti, a plot point shared by
both Moore and Morrison. (Written by
Grant Morrison, art by Colin MacNeil, from
“Fair Exchange” in 2000 AD #514, 1987)
There is no way to reasonably deny the fact that Morrison’s short pieces for 2000 AD owe a heavy debt to Alan Moore. “Hotel Harry Felix,” features an alien life form that takes the form of thoughts and ideas, a concept Moore had already explored in “Eureka.” His second, “The Alteration,” is a two-pager featuring a man on the run who is caught by monsters and turns into one, only to have it turn out that he was actually a monster who had contracted “humanitis” and was being cured, a joke not entirely dissimilar to Moore’s two-page “Return of the Thing.” His fourth, “Some People Never Listen,” bears more than a passing resemblance to Moore’s “The Bounty Hunters.” His seventh, “Wheels of Fury,” featuring an AI car that turns into a jealous lover, is almost a straight reworking of the Moore/Gibbons “The Dating Game,” in which a city’s central computer becomes a jealous lover. “Fair Exchange” uses the same joke that concludes “D.R. and Quinch Have Fun on Earth” of a comedic misunderstanding in which an alien is presented with something that is secretly rude graffiti in its native language, while the two-part “Fruitcake and Veg” is a more or less straightforward repeat of the basic joke of D.R. & Quinch, including a section where the narrator reflects, “People say to me, ‘Mr. Sweet, what is it that makes yo commit senseless and irresponsible acts of wanton destruction? What made you become the deranged homicidal maniac we’ve come to know and love? Well it’s a fair question. So I always give them a fair answer. I say it’s my upbringing, I tell them society’s to blame… and then I blow ‘em up!”
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Comics Reviews (July 8th, 2015)

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First of all, these reviews are now being cross-posted to ComicMix, which means I should possibly introduce myself for the people who just clicked on a link there and found themselves here. So, hi everyone. I’m Phil Sandifer, this is my blog. It’s a geek media blog, running a history of British comics called The Last War in Albion on Fridays, a rotating feature (currently a Game of Thrones blog, switching over to an occultism-tinged take on the Super Nintendo in a few weeks) on Mondays, and occasional other features, currently including weekly reviews of Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell. It’s also got the archives of TARDIS Eruditorum, a sprawling history of Doctor Who. And, obviously, on Wednesday, new comics reviews.

We keep the lights on here via a Patreon, and if you enjoy the site, I ask that you consider kicking a dollar a week my way.

Reviews tend not to involve giving a letter or number grade to things, but instead ranking them relative to each other. So these, as with every week, are ordered from the worst to the best, with the caveat that I paid my own money for all of them, whether out of an expectation of quality or out of the bleak pathology that is comics fandom. Except that’s a lie this week, which we’ll get to. But first:

The Amazing Spider-Man: Renew Your Vows #2

The problem – which was present in the first issue, but largely overshadowed by the sheer energy of the thing, is that this book gives every sign of trying to have it both ways. It’s unabashedly aimed at the still-vocal chunk of comics fandom who appreciated that our version (and yes, I just gave away my allegiances) of Spider-Man was married; who thought that was an interesting way to set the comics version of a pop culture icon apart from all the others. But it’s also seeming to set up a critique of the structure, being based on how having a family necessitates reconceptualizing Peter as the sort of person who says, “that’s what daddies do. We do anything to keep our families safe. ANYTHING.” And who then has nightmares about the awful things he’s done already. As I said, in the first issue of this things moved fast enough that you could avoid dwelling on this contradiction. Here… they don’t, resulting in the unsatisfying spectacle of a comic that’s primarily about the tension of whether or not it’s going to be an insult to the readers it’s marketed to.

Archie #1

I got an advance review copy of this, and it was not purchased. I might have picked it up, especially given that this was a light week, but we’ll never truly know.

In any case, it’s pretty good, but unable to escape the gravity of its own futility. Which is to say that, quite aside from any ethical issues about the relationship between Archie Comics, the direct market, and crowdfunding, let’s not forget the fact that the abandoned Kickstarter for these Archie books was never going to meet goal.…

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A Brief Treatise on the Rules of Thrones 2.07: A Man Without Honor

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State of Play

The choir goes off. The board is laid out thusly.
Lions of King’s Landing: Tyrion Lannister, Cersei Lannister
The Lion, Jaime Lannister
The Direwolf, Catelyn Stark
Dragons of Qarth: Daenerys Targaryen
Bears of Qarth: Jorah Mormont
Direwolves of the Wall: Jon Snow
Lions of Harrenhal: Tywin Lannister
Direwolves of Winterfell: Brandon Stark
The Direwolf, Robb Stark
Direwolves of King’s Landing: Sansa Stark
Direwolves of Harrenhal: Arya Stark
Kraken of Winterfell: Theon Greyjoy
Flowers of King’s Landing: Shae
Dogs of King’s Landing: Sandor Clegane
The episode is in seventeen parts. The first is three minutes long and is set in Winterfell. The opening image is Theon in bed.
The second is three minutes long and is set north of the Wall. The transition is by family, from Bran and Rickon to Jon Snow. 
The third is six minutes long and is set in Harrenhal. The transition is by image, from Ygritte as a prisoner to a man hanging.
The fourth is one minute long and is set in King’s Landing. The transition is by family, from Arya to Sansa Stark.
The fifth is one minute long and is set in Qarth. The transition is by hard cut, from a close-up of the Hound to Daenerys walking through Qarth.
The sixth is two minutes long and is set north of the Wall. The transition is by family, from Daenerys Targaryen to Jon Snow, who knows nothing.
The seventh is three minutes long and is set in the Stark camp in the Riverlands. The transition is by family, from Jon Snow to Robb Stark. 
The eighth is two minutes long and is set in Winterfell. The transition is by family, form Robb Stark to Bran, in abesntia. 
The ninth is two minutes long and is set in Qarth. The transition is by hard cut, from Maester Luwin being led away to Daenerys and her empty cages.
The tenth is three minutes long and is set north of the Wall. The transition is by family, from Daenerys Targaryen to Jon Snow. 
The eleventh is five minutes long and is set in King’s Landing. The transition is by family, from Jon Snow to Sansa Stark. 
The twelfth is six minutes long and is set in the Stark camp in the Riverlands. The transition is by family, from Cersei to Jaime Lannister. It features the death of Alton Lannister and Torrhen Karstark, killed by Jaime Lannister. 
The thirteenth is four minutes long and is set in Qarth. The transition is by image, from Jaime Lannister’s carnage to Quaithe’s. It features the death of most of the ruling council of Qarth. 
The fourteenth is two minutes long and is set in the Stark camp in the Riverlands. The transition is by hard cut, from Pyat Phree to a Stark banner serving as establishing shot.
The fifteenth is three minutes long and is set in King’s Landing. The transition is by family, from Jaime to Cersei and Tyrion Lannister, and by dialogue, with Tyrion’s message mentioning Tarth. 
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All The Mirrors of the World

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Having carefully built the storytelling machine that is Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell over three episodes, Harness and Haynes here start to explore some of the less obvious things that it can do. The result is yet another step up for the series. 
Two sequences strike me as particularly highlighting this sense of a show that is reveling in the basic fact of its own flexibility. The first are the sequences involving Lady Pole under the care of John Secundus and Mr. Honeyfoot, which juxtapose the acutely brutal portrayal of Lady Pole’s suffering with the awkward comedy of Secundus and Honeyfoot. A highlight is the scene where Secundus awkwardly escorts Stephen out of Lady Pole’s room and closes the door, leaning against it with a pained and awkward expression on his face. It’s set up and played as a gag – part and parcel of Secundus’s general cheery ineptitude. Edward Hogg gives a beleaguered sigh of “well that’s over with” as he leans against the door. It’s funny. As is the awkward question about how much experience they actually have in running an asylum. And then, from behind the door, comes Lady Pole’s anguished scream, completely and utterly unfunny.
It’s an impressive juxtaposition, paid off well when Secundus and Honeyfoot prove themselves to be genuinely invested in helping Lady Pole by fending off Childermass. But the reason it works is that both Lady Pole and the Secundus/Honeyfoot double act have been well established by the series. (Indeed, the entire sequence in “The Education of a Magician” in which Childermass randomly shows up to forbid the two from opening a school of magic is basically the setup for a gag in which the punchline is “so instead they run an asylum.”) And because they’ve been kept relatively separate, they’ve been allowed to develop their own narrative gravity, which is then spectacularly maintained as they cross paths. 
In many ways even more jaw-dropping is the sequence of scenes when Jonathan Strange finally goes through the mirror out onto the King’s Roads. First of all, these are just a lovely bit of visual weirdness, and the image of Jonathan Strange, dressed the perfect Romantic, striding up the stone staircase, strewn with moss and withered vines, up to the impossible vista is simply a perfect image that captures everything that the show promises. (Also lovely, the small callback to Strange and Norrell’s first meeting as Norrell looks briefly into the mirror early on, the document Strange sent through it still hanging suspended within.)
But equally great is the way in which the show transitions in and out of this. The cut into it, from Strange confronting his supposed student during the billiards game, is obvious enough, and what the King’s Road intro needed. The transition into Faerie has to be jarring. That’s the point. What didn’t have to happen, and what is thus brilliant for happening, is the transition out of Faerie into the confrontation with Drawlight, including the wonderfully ridiculous list of vendettas handed to Strange.
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All Known and Unknown Things (The Last War in Albion Part 103: The Not-End of Halo Jones)

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This is the fourth of five parts of The Last War in Albion Chapter Eleven, focusing on Alan Moore’s The Ballad of Halo Jones. An omnibus of all five parts is available on Smashwords. If you are a Kickstarter backer or a Patreon backer at $2 or higher per week, instructions on how to get your complimentary copy have been sent to you.

The Ballad of Halo Jones is available in a collected edition that can be purchased in the US or in the UK.

Previously in The Last War in Albion: The third book of The Ballad of Halo Jones offered a portrayal of futuristic war grounded in the psychological horrors war inflicts on its combatants. 

“First, there is Brahma, the self-aware immensity, from whose thought-substance are created all known and unknown things.” –Grant Morrison, 18 Days

It’s a shocking portrayal of post-traumatic stress, grounded in the same brutal social realism that saw Mills depicting Charley Bourne on the dole in 1933, and, for that matter, in a Britain where Thatcher’s had only recently gone to war with Argentina for some obscure islands as crushing unemployment sparked riots at home.
Figure 815: Halo Jones slowly drinks herself to death. (Written by Alan
Moore, art by Ian Gibson, from The Ballad of Halo Jones Book Three
in 2000 AD #451, 1986)
This parallel is, of course, in no way incidental. The Ballad of Halo Jones was, from the beginning, rooted in social commentary on Thatcher’s Britain. This was in many ways the point, the satirical tradition of 2000 AD being one of the things that endeared it to Moore in spite of the numerous frustrations. The Hoop was just another variation on the terraces of Moore’s childhood: a place built for poor people to die in with as little fuss as possible for the rest of the world. The callous disregard for the safety or well-being of its residents and the cruel farce that there might be any jobs for them anyway was, as with the best strips in 2000 AD, and indeed the best science fiction, nothing more or less than Moore looking outside his own window and describing what he saw from an oblique angle, an approach perfectly suited to Gibson’s brilliantly grotesque blend of realism and cartooning. And the focus on the economic realities continues to be at the heart of the strip in Book Three, which uses its prologue chapter to depict Halo’s decade-long downward spiral after leaving the Clara Pandy as a vicious cycle of unemployment and claustrophobia slowly leads her to a life of petty crime and alcoholism. It’s in this context that Halo’s enlistment in the military is shown, making it clear that this is an act of desperation – the only way out of the galaxy that Halo can find. In this regard, notably, Moore surpasses his model Charley’s War, which never really looked at the economic conditions that make the military an attractive career option, least of all tied that into its overall portrait of the horrors, both material and psychological, of war, and it is hardly surprising he considers Book Three the high point of The Ballad of Halo Jones.
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Comics Reviews (July 1st, 2015)

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Part One: Comics

From worst to best of what I voluntarily paid money for.

Secret Wars #4

It’s not even that it’s a bad comic. It’s just that, well, at this point it’s become impossible to read this comic as a separate phenomenon from the overall realignment of Marvel comics (see part two of this post). Here we have what is in effect a brutal rejection of an entire line of thought in Marvel comics that has been going for several years – the Cyclops-as-Revolutionary angle. The comic is explicitly configured to allow Cyclops’s vision of fiery rebirth a moment in the sunlight and then to cut it down. Specifically in favor of a Reed vs Doom story. Although with the knowledge that both X-Men and Fantastic Four are being consciously downplayed within Marvel right now for broader corporate reasons, it’s tough to see that as a promising dualism either.

The real problem, though, is that I’ve always wanted to root for the Cyclops-as-Revolutionary angle. I’ve always thought that challenge to what superhero narratives are was worth exploring seriously and allowing the possibility of moral validity. Hickman turns away from it very, very hard here. I reject that, aesthetically. It’s not even that I think Cyclops is morally right. I think that’s a functionally meaningless question within the melodramatic metaphysics of a superhero universe. It’s that I think Cyclops is a vehicle for giving voice to perspectives superhero narratives don’t usually get to explore, and that Hickman gave him depressingly short shrift here.

Yes, there’s more issues and this may turn around. But this is a review of this specific issue. And given Secret Wars demands to be read as a meta-commentary on the state of Marvel Comics, I think what it’s saying this month is rank fucking bullshit.

Grant Morrison’s 18 Days #1

Honestly, I just think it’s unfair to ask the world to offer any sort of critical judgment of this, and I’m half-inclined to say that I’m going to buy it and not review it. It’s clearly not a major Grant Morrison project. And look, I don’t begrudge him taking the money and running, which he’s clearly done with this. But this book is a Kirby pastiche reworking of the Mahabharata with an artist who is not Jack Kirby. And a writer who is not Jack Kirby. It’s pretty. It’s competent. But what on Earth is one supposed to say of it? Morrison is in the backmatter comparing himself favorably to Lord of the Rings and Shakespeare. This issue doesn’t stand up to either. But equally, it seems vital to note that the problem is not what the book is – a western comic based on Hindi mythology. The problem is that this is just a Kirby pastiche of novel subject matter.

Ultimate End #3

There’s a shell game here, obviously. This book inherits its premise from other bits of Secret Wars. Not all of those bits are out yet. So the precise nature of Manhattan and of this mash-up of the 616 and Ultimate Universes is not yet revealed.…

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A Short Guide to Janelle Monáe and the Metropolis Saga

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The June bonus post, as voted upon by my generous Patrons. 

A large amount of the critical discourse surrounding Janelle Monáe has focused on the question of why she hasn’t been more successful. I mean, sure, she’s got a major label record deal, is one of only a handful of black women to run her own record label, is one of the most critically acclaimed artists working, and is making a good living while making art according to her own vision and nobody else’s, but her best-performing album only hit #5 in the charts, so obviously she’s doing something wrong. And looking at her work and her career, I think I know what her problem is: she’s never had a white male science fiction fan whose only credentials for writing about music are having co-authored a book about They Might Be Giants write a detailed guide to her work.

An appalling oversight, to be sure, but one I’m only too happy to help correct.
The bulk of Monáe’s work consists of the five (and counting) part Metropolis Saga, released over two albums and an EP, and currently projected to run for seven parts, although it was previously slated as four parts. The suite focuses on the stories of Monáe’s alter-ego Cindi Mayweather, a time-traveling android.
Suite 0: The Audition
Monáe’s 2003 self-released album The Audition is not actually a part of the Metropolis Saga, but contains two songs that introduce the themes and concepts she would later explore in the Metropolis Saga: “Metropolis” and “Cindi.”
The first of these is interesting in that it serves as a concise and bespoke sketch of the Metropolis setting, describing a run down and oppressive city (“Population ten zillion and six”) from the perspective of a “cyber girl” living “on the wired side of town.” Most of the song is a liltingly wistful number about the unnamed narrator’s dreams of freedom, with a spoken word bridge about the prejudices faced by “wired folk” on the grounds that “we have no feelings no memories or minds.” Several major concepts that will be expanded on in the Metropolis Saga proper are introduced here, most notably the repressive Droid Control and the character of Anthony Greendown. 
The second is a two minute ballad that has no overt sci-fi trappings, instead being about the gulf between one’s dreams and one’s ordinary self, singing about “that girl in the mirror / with hair like a rock star / she wants to dance but she has cold feet/ her confidence is low / so much talent but who’ll know / when she’s afraid to follow her dreams.” But the lyrics make reference to trying “to be Cindi, in hopes that they’d notice,” a title drop that alludes to the robotic alter-ego she would eventually flesh out in detail. Crucial – indeed, as will eventually become clear, the entire point of the exercise – is the aspirational quality, one that’s implicit in the demo album’s title, The Audition. This is, in many ways, the eternal plot of the Metropolis Saga: Janelle Monáe’s continuing attempt to become Cindi Mayweather, a process that is indistinguishable from her continuing attempt to define what that means. 
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A Brief Treatise on the Rules of Thrones 2.06: The Old Gods and the New

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State of Play
The choir goes off. The board is laid out thusly:
Lions of King’s Landing: Tyrion Lannister, Cersei Lannister
The Direwolf, Catelynn Stark
Dragons of Qarth: Daenerys Targaryen
Mockingbirds of Harrenhal: Petyr Baelish
Direwolves of the Wall: Jon Snow
Lions of Harrenhal: Tywin Lannister
Direwolves of Winterfell: Brandon Stark
The Direwolf, Robb Stark
Direwolves of King’s Landing: Sansa Stark, Joffrey Baratheon [sic]
Direwolves of Harrenhal: Arya Stark
Kraken of Winterfell: Theon Greyjoy
Flowers of King’s Landing: Shae
Dogs of King’s Landing: Sandor Clegane
Pyke is abandoned.
The episode is in fourteen parts. The first is eight minutes long and is set in Winterfell. The first image is of Maester Luwin running into his chamber. It features the death of Roderick Cassell, beheaded poorly by Theon Greyjoy.
The second is three minutes long and is set north of the Wall. The transition is by family, from Bran and Rickon Stark to Jon Snow. 
The third is four minutes long and is set in Harrenhal. The transition is by family, from Jon Snow to Arya Stark. 
The fourth is six minutes long and is set north of the Wall. The transition is by family, from Arya to Jon Snow. It features the death of several unnamed wildlings.
The fifth is six minutes long and is set in King’s Landing. The transition is by family, from Jon Snow to Sansa Stark. It features the death of Jocrassa Fel Fotch Pasameer-Day-Slitheen, torn apart by an angry mob.
The sixth is four minutes long and is set in Qarth. The transition is by theme, with both scenes featuring monarchs who cannot control things.
The seventh is four minutes long and is set in Harrenhal. The transition is by dialogue, from Daenerys discussing conquest of the Iron Throne to Tywin’s battle maps. 
The eighth is tjree minutes long and is set in the Stark camp in the Riverlands. The transition is by family, from Arya to Robb. 
The ninth is three minutes long and is set north of the Wall. The transition is by family, from Robb Stark to Jon Snow, and by the theme of inadvisable sex.
The tenth is two minutes long and is set in the Stark camp in the Riverlands. The transition is by family, from Jon Snow to Robb Stark.
The eleventh is two minutes long and is set in Winterfell. The transition is by dialogue, from talking about Theon to Theon.
The twelfth is one minute long and is set in King’s Landing. The transition is by theme, from Osha’s use of sex to Shae.
The thirteenth is one minute long and is set in Winterfell. The transition is by dialogue, from Shae telling Sansa to trust nobody to Osha demonstrating the point to Theon.
The fourteenth is two minutes long and is set in Qarth. The transition is by dialogue, with Daenerys talking about whoring herself for a boat after Bran and Rickon’s escape. It features a significant depletion in the number of Dothraki in the series. The final image is of a man carrying Daenerys’s dragons towards a tower, his identity a riddle whose answer is chess. 
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Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell Episode 3: The Education of a Magician

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There we go.
It’s perhaps ironic that, having spent two episodes building up the Jonathan Strange/Mr. Norrell dualism that’s the core engine of the series, it’s the act of splitting them back up that drives it to its most emphatic heights thus far. 
In strict dramatic terms, this works because of Lady Pole. Even though Strange and Norrell are in different locations and pursuing entirely divergent interests through most of the episode, the dynamic of Arabella trying to uncover what is wrong with Lady Pole and Norrell working to keep the matter secret links events up well. It’s in some ways surprising this works so well – the plots really are quite separate in terms of what happens, with Strange entirely insulated from events in London, and vice versa. 
The linking moment is instead entirely symbolic – Strange being pushed to attempt ancient magic, and learns of the ways in which this magic is tacitly dangerous. On rawly symbolic terms, of course, it’s significant that Strange’s spell is a lesser version of Norrell’s original sin – both spells involve undoing death. 
But there’s curious nuance underlying this – up to this point the danger of ancient magic had largely been expressed in terms of the Gentleman as an essentially Faustian danger. Old magic involved trafficking with faeries, and faeries are dangerous and untrustworthy. But Strange’s spell to make the dead speak does require any such deals. And yet it is nevertheless clearly dangerous magic, with Strange unable to get the dead to stop speaking again. The danger, in other words, is not merely something that can be tied to the peculiarities of the Gentleman, but rather to something more primal within that sort of magic, having to do with the way in which the magic involves traversing between worlds. 
This is, obviously, unsurprising ground for a story of British fantasy. It seems all but inevitable that we’ll be getting an actual portal to faerie before this tale is done. And it’s striking that Strange’s horror at the consequences of his magic is fundamentally a horror of the uncanny – the fact that the consequences of his magic are monstrous.
The key cut, then, is from Strange cowering from the speaking dead to Norrell’s appalling callousness as he visits Lady Pole, in which he bluntly informs her that she is an innocent casualty of war and of the development of magic, and simply informs her that she will suffer for seventy-five years without respite. The cruelty of it, especially coming after nearly two straight episodes of consciously building sympathy for Lady Pole’s plight, is genuinely shocking, and it is only Marsan’s performance, which emphasizes the extent to which Norrell is aware of how monstrous his actions are, that keeps him from simply becoming an outright villain of the piece. (Note also, of course, the cut back to Strange, unable to extricate himself from the consequences of his own spell.)
The sense of ancient magic as an object of uncanny horror finds resonance in the scenes featuring the Gentleman himself, which begin to make textually explicit the way in which his character is drawn to the marginalized members of society.
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