Staying at home is the norm... What are you reading?

PsychedelicDiamond

Wild at Heart and weird on top
Legacy
Jan 30, 2011
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Piranesi (2020)

Second novel by fantasy author Susanna Clarke, following her debut Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, which I haven't read but must have been popular enough to get a television series on the BBC that I haven't seen either.

Piranesi is a lean book of a bit under 300 pages. It's written as a series of diary entries from a young man with no recollection of his prior life who has been inhabiting a strange, endless building for about five years. The building consists of three floors worth of large halls, the lowest of which is flooded by sea water, the topmost one which has clouds passing through it. The halls are filled with all sorts of statues, the only other life forms keeping him company being birds, fish and a mysterious man the narrator calls "The Other" who sporadically shows up to ask for his assistance in his search for some supernatural power he is convinced can be found in this mysterious megastructure.

On face value you'd assume Piranesi's primary hook would be the mysteries surrounding this strange world, the narrators origin and the nature of "The Other's" quest. And those are what technically makes up the novels plot, but it's all relatively incidental. Piranesi, at its core, is not so much a supernatural mystery as it's a fantastical version of a shipwrecked survivors tale. Clarke is less concerned with the supernatural metaphysics and the minor conspiracy that led to the protagonist being stranded in this otherwordly labyrinth as she is with his day to day survival, the spirituality he develops without the context of our world, the way he relates to this strange place that is the only home he can remember, the way his personality takes shape.

And it is quite an interesting personality. Piranesi (which isn't technically the protagonist's name, but it is what the only other human he knows calls him) is a bright and curious person, inquiring and documenting this sparse world that seems to consist of nothing but stone, marble, water and some plant and animal life with a mix of childlike wonder and scientific interest. Many of his diary entries are devoted to decriptions of the houses many statues, the ebb and flow of the tides, the behaviour of the birds and fish, the way he makes clothes and tools from fish leather and seaweed and the way he finds meaning and spiritual fulfilment in this life.

All of which makes the actual plot feel a bit obligatory, in that it helps the book, short as it is, maintain a sense of forward progression and potentially inspire some curiosity, even if I wouldn't go as far as to call it intrigue. As it gradually unravels its backstory and the why and how of its premise it employs some reasonably compelling, if mostly cliche, plot beats about scientific hubris, cult mentality, gaslighting, misguided ambition... it's all fine, really, but none of it is stuff you haven't seen before and neither is its eventual resolution.

Piranesi was an entertaining read that never overstaid its welcome, even if its narration was overall more compelling than its narrative. As a somewhat abstract (if far from experimental) take on a sort of Robinson Crusoe story from the viewpoint of a character who represents humanity at its best, but stripped to its bare essentials, it conjures up some compelling imagery and emotionally and intellectually resonant themes. I can't say anything about it left me extraordinarily impressed but it was more than worth the relatively minor amount of time I put into it.
 
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Agema

Do everything and feel nothing
Legacy
Mar 3, 2009
9,152
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Piranesi (2020)
...
You might already be aware of this, but Piranesi was an artist in the 1700s, possibly most famous these days for making drawings of atmospheric, fantasy prisons: vast stone chambers with convoluted architecture and massive machines. I assume that was some inspiration for or has some meaning to the story.
 

PsychedelicDiamond

Wild at Heart and weird on top
Legacy
Jan 30, 2011
2,041
876
118
You might already be aware of this, but Piranesi was an artist in the 1700s, possibly most famous these days for making drawings of atmospheric, fantasy prisons: vast stone chambers with convoluted architecture and massive machines. I assume that was some inspiration for or has some meaning to the story.
Yes sir, it does. The connection is actually explained and justified in the book.
 
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Ezekiel

Elite Member
May 29, 2007
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Buddha

People about to be executed and on same page former slave owner runs headfirst into the comic panel. Like the mix of darkness (or call it realism) and humor. It started publishing in 1972. Osamu Tezuka was allowed to draw cock and balls. Guess it just depends on how the genitals are drawn and the context.



Potential NSFW imagery removed - mod

Unfortunately, the pages are mirrored. It's my only manga in which the pages are mirrored.
 

Drathnoxis

I love the smell of card games in the morning
Legacy
Sep 23, 2010
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Just off-screen
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Osamu Tezuka was allowed to draw cock and balls. Guess it just depends on how the genitals are drawn and the context.
It's because they are kids. It's perfectly fine to represent a child's penis in Japanese media. See also Dragon Ball and Digimon Tamers.
 

Agema

Do everything and feel nothing
Legacy
Mar 3, 2009
9,152
6,399
118
Hel's Eight (Stark Holborn)

Sequel to "Ten Low", about a POW turned medic on a barren moon at the arse-end of a not-so-distantly colonised solar system. With her on the moon are mostly the godawful dregs of humanity, many POWs from the civil war between the system's authority and a rebel movement. However, there's something else on the moon - some dangerous sort of force or maybe lifeform that seems to be triggered by chance and can be harnessed by some humans. The books have plenty of the feel of Westerns crossed with postapocalyptic, Mad Max style vibes. Ten Low has sequestered herself away from her friends and associates, feeling that she poses a risk to everyone around her. Unfortunately for her, other people have very different ideas and she's about to be sucked back into a new issue, as a corporate concern wants to take the moon over by hoo or by crook. Might be a another sequel?

The Trials of Empire (Richard Swan)

End to one of the better fantasy series of recent years. Our protagonists, chiefly a justice Vonvalt and his protege Helena, are attempting to prevent a zealot priest from taking over the empire and drowing the world in a sea of blood and demons. The first two feel a little like detective novels in that they are largely about investigations, where this junks that in for the heavy action finale. It feels distinctly weaker than its predecessors in the trilogy and so is a slightly disappointing end, although in the context that it's still comfortable superior to the mass of stuff out there.

The Knave of Secrets (Alex Livingston)

Fantasy book about four card sharps trying to make it big, who are dragged into the plots of spies and politics on an independent island nearby two rival empires. I almost want to like this book, but lots of parts of it don't quite hold together. The leads should be rogues, and as gambling cheats are rogues, but they are simultaneous weirdly wholesome and boring as if the author didn't have the guts to make them do properly morally difficult things. They lack style and pizzazz. They don't feel like they gel as a team - like Mission Impossible or others where their varied skills interact and complement to carry out amazing plans. The main protagonist has apparently developed new form of magic great for cheating at gambling, which could be interesting except it seems to be a macguffin - he mostly cheats conventionally with card tricks and weighted dice. And much more that seems to just not quite make sense, work, or get the reader involved. I'll give the author another chance or two because there's definitely some promise in there, but...
 

NerfedFalcon

Level i Flare!
Mar 23, 2011
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In 2008, I was told to read Fullmetal Alchemist by a guy I met in the United States, but it wasn't until fairly recently that I actually started reading it. Oh my god, this series is so good. The art is decent, but for the most part not that exceptional; I'm not really an art guy, so I can't say much about it, other than that having the characters appear in super-low detail to emphasize their reactions is cute. But the writing is genuinely the best of any manga I've ever read. The setting, the plot, the characters, it's all just incredible. Definitely one worth reading if you get the chance. (Currently up to volume 7 out of 27.)

Funnily enough, on the side I've also got Fist of the North Star, which is pretty much the opposite: the story is serviceable with a few good moments, but the artwork is exceptional, with Tetsuo Hara using the kind of detail most comic artists reserve for special occasions in every single panel. Buildings with hundreds of individual blasted-out windows, clothing folds, skin, hair, everything is just drawn larger than life no matter the distance or the importance, and it's something that none of the adaptations I'm aware of gets right (understandably, but still).
 
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Agema

Do everything and feel nothing
Legacy
Mar 3, 2009
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Machine Vendetta (Alastair Reynolds)

Third in the loose SF trilogy of Prefect Dreyfus mysteries following "Aurora Rising" (originally called "The Prefect") and "Elysium Fire". You could just about get away without reading the previous two, as enough is explained about what has preceded to make it viable. It is set on a collection of space stations called the "Glitter Band" around a planet called Yellowstone. Each station in the Glitter Band is an independent polity, and to oversee law is a paramilitary police force called Panoply of which Dreyfus is, arguably, the top detective. The Glitter Band's networks are also infested with two malignant AIs, Aurora and Clockmaker, who hold an uneasy peace with neither able to overcome human activity and the other. Two Panoply agents are murdered in mysterious circumstances, and this leads Dreyfus into an investigation throughout the Glitter Band, and even into Panoply itself. Is this a routine investigation or crime and corruption, or something deeper that may threaten the whole Glitter Band?

It's not brilliant, but by one of the top SF authors around, it's a cut above.