It’s impossible to avoid the allusions and parallels, both implicit and explicit, between Piranesi and other fantasy novels. After all, there’s a quote from C.S. Lewis’s The Magician’s Nephew right at the beginning of the novel. But somehow this novel feels new, maybe because of how it’s narrated. We get the perspective of the character of Piranesi from inside a world that is the only world he remembers, rather than the perspective of an outsider visiting a world that’s new to them.
The book is narrated through Piranesi’s journal entries as he explores the House, a massive place with thousands of halls and vestibules. It’s so big it has clouds, an ocean, and tides, and it is covered in statues. Piranesi spends his time exploring the House (he capitalizes words that seem important to him, and he seems to view the House as almost sentient) and cataloging the statues. To me the book seems to start a bit slow for this reason. There are a lot of mentions of various places like “the Third North-Western Hall” and “the Eighth Vestibule,” and it got a little old, but the plot picks up quickly. Piranesi has twice-weekly contact with a man he calls the Other, and to Piranesi’s knowledge there are no other living humans in the House. Then one day Piranesi meets another person, and everything begins to change.
I think this might be the first time that I’m giving the suggestion that multiple other Cannonballers have at times given about various books: Go in with as little information as possible. I almost wish I hadn’t even read the blurb on the back of the book. Just let the events unfold and enjoy the process. Clarke is a great writer. I think Piranesi might be one of the best examples of showing and not telling. I had a good sense early on of the personalities of Piranesi and the Other, without any kind of information dumped and little explication. I knew almost immediately that I didn’t like the Other, and while some of this might be been from reading between the lines of the book blurb, it’s also easy to see how hew views Piranesi and how naive to this Piranesi is.
I generally liked the ending to the novel, given the options of how it could have ended. Although I agree with narfna that the last couple of pages just didn’t quite work for me, overall it was an enjoyable, well-paced, and well-written novel with a beautiful cover.
cbr15bingo Strange Worlds