susanna clarke gets high marks for her lovely writing, atmosphere, and creating an *extremely* likeable protagonist.

sadly the other was not that compelling of a villain to me, and raphael feels shoehorned in the last two parts of the book.

I felt I had to power through the last half of the book that relied heavily on what felt like multiple exposition dumps too, and I’m not sure why… I didn’t dislike the mystery, but I wasn’t gripped by it like so many others clearly were. something about how the mystery finally resolved felt incidental to piranesi’s situation, and the overall effect was just okay to me. I’ll still be seated for studio laika’s animated feature adaptation of this though!