Title Piranesi Series --- Author Susanna Clarke Cover Art --- Publisher Bloomsbury - 2021 First Printing Bloomsbury - 2020 Category Fantasy Warnings None Main Characters Piranesi, the Other Main Elements Magical Places

Piranesi’s house is no ordinary building: its rooms are infinite, its corridors endless, its walls are lined with thousands upon thousands of statues, each one different from all the others. Within the labyrinth of halls an ocean is imprisoned; waves thunder up staircases, rooms are flooded in an instant. But Piranesi is not afraid; he understands the tides as he understands the pattern of the labyrinth itself. He lives to explore the house.

There is one other person in the house—a man called The Other, who visits Piranesi twice a week and asks for help with research into A Great and Secret Knowledge. But as Piranesi explores, evidence emerges of another person, and a terrible truth begins to unravel, revealing a world beyond the one Piranesi has always known.

It's hard to write this review, I don't quite know where to start, and I feel that I would have to write it as beautifully as this book was written and that I could never do. So perhaps I'll just do a mundane breakdown of various aspects.

First and foremost is the location. A labyrinth of endless rooms adorned with statues and inundated by tides. You don't expect an ocean to exist in the bottom of a house, for its tides to flood the rooms following a rhythm all their own, but here they do. And just as the rooms appear to be infinite, so are the numerous statues, each one unique. Some are damaged and worn, others are small, some a huge, and Piranesi knows them intimately. While Piranesi wanders these halls alone, there is the Other, whom he meets with a couple times a week. But other than him, there are only the birds, the fish, and the Dead.

When it comes to characters, there's Piranesi of course. That isn't his name but since he can't remember what his actual name is, he's happy to let the Other call him this. To Piranesi, these empty halls are home. He knows where to gather food, and he takes copious notes as he explores the wonders of him domicile. He is content with the patterns of his life and can't always understand the strange tasks the Other has him do. Apparently there is knowledge and power to be found, but Piranesi doesn't care about such things. He's a wonderful child-like character, sharing his wonder and love for his home with the reader. He is also perhaps the most unreliable narrator, he may know the House and can keep from getting lost, but he has lost himself in the process.

And then there's the plot I suppose. The plot is really a mystery, for what is this place? Who was Piranesi before? How does the Other seem to manage to get his hands on things like shoes? This part really had my brain working, and I would most certainly have enjoyed bouncing ideas off of other readers if I'd had someone the read this book with. At first I thought this was all fantasy of course, kind of like the strange house in Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell. Or maybe this place wasn't as big as it seemed (though Piranesis described distances in kilometers, but he's wrong about many things...but rarely when it comes to the House) and it was something as mundane as a modern museum that got inundated during some post-apocalyptic event or some other kind of strange science fictional construct. But in fact the fawn with the lightpost holds the key...and to say more would spoil it enormously, especially if that reference doesn't mean anything to you.

But perhaps what I loved best was how it was written. Piranesi has a tendency to capitalize everything. It's not just the tides, but the Tides. It is the House, filled with Halls, some of which are even filled with Clouds (this can be dangerous for you cannot see where you are going and some of the Rooms are derelict and dangerous). The world feels dreamlike, and Piranesi's fear of madness always lurking in the corners, though as the reader you feel that he might just be a little mad to start with. There is an ethereal beauty to Clarke's words. You feel Piranesi's aloneness and you know something is wrong, but he seems unaware of this, content with his...well I was going to say little world but in fact it is of unimaginable size. But those little moments that just feel wrong, a word spoken by the Other perhaps, or an encounter with some missing pages from a notebook, leaves the reader with a sense of unease, that while “The Beauty of the House is immeasurable; its Kindness infinite.” it may also be a prison, trapping the unwary and taking from them all that they were.

If you visit Goodreads you see a lot of 5 stars. You'll also see a lot of 1's. Yes, its that kind of book. It you want adventure and a fast paced plots this is definitely not it. I don't disagree with people that say you spend 100 pages just wandering rooms. There's a bit more than that, a few hints being picked up along the way, but its definitely slow. Thus I feel if you wish to pick up this book don't pick it up for the story, but pick it up for its atmosphere. Revel in the House and explore its nooks and crannies, let it wrap you in its strange magic where there is no real magic to be encountered...in fact this is not a tale of someone using magic, its like trying to describe the concept of magic itself. There is a real world core to this book, something that still ties it to reality when it could otherwise just be an endless stream of conciousness, but it might not be enough for all readers. It was enough for me, in fact the clash of realities was what made this book special to me. I can see why it was nominated for just about every award there is out there, but didn't manage to win just about any of them. It's that kind of book...