If you liked Gaiman’s The Ocean at the End of the Lane then you’ll also like Piranesi.
It’s basically all the haunting beauty of that magic system condensed into one short novel. If you enjoyed Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrel then read Piranesi. I can’t even begin to recommend reading Piranesi enough. As Piranesi explores he comes to find that perhaps he is not as alone as he once thought. The Other is searching for A Great and Secret Knowledge, one that Piranesi is not sure exists, but he’s Piranesi’s only friend and he is too kind to deny his friend his help. A meticulous scholar, Piranesi takes detailed notes on his days and the rooms he finds himself in, all to help the Other, the only other living person in his strange world. The sky is trapped on the floor above him filling the rooms with clouds and lightning that hide the statues housed within them. The ocean crashes on the floor beneath him and when the tides roll in he is in danger of being flooded out. Piranesi lives in a house of infinite rooms and endless corridors filled with statues. It’s an exercise in being shut in and lonely, though being locked in one of the most beautiful locations I’ve ever read about. Where JS&MN takes places over years of time, Piranesi takes place over roughly five months. However where JS&MN has a sprawling cast of characters and a multitude of settings, Piranesi has an extremely small number of characters and places. At times I even found myself wondering if it could actually be a direct sequel, removed from the original through time, but I believe it’s just that the two books contain enough of the same themes and ideas that make them so similar. Piranesi can be seen as a spiritual sequel to Clarke’s first book, Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell. I’d read it too fast and now I’ll never be able to read it for the first time again. Achingly beautiful and surprisingly deep, I found that I was actually angry with myself when I turned the last page. Instead, I devoured Piranesi, eating every word like a starving woman. When I checked my mail after work today and saw it had arrived I thought it would be nice to read a page or two before making dinner. I will admit that I forgot that I had preordered this book.
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