Spoilerific comparison of Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell with Piranesi and Three-Body Problem (with a bonus slag at The Da Vinci Code):
One of my favorite books of all time is Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell. It’s exploring a weird world, fully and marvelously realized in amazing Scheherazade detail, but from the first page to the last it’s all about what the people in this weird world choose to do. Their follies and their temptations and their strength. It’s a twenty out of ten for me.
Piranesi has some of that strength with an amazing main character and it has some wonderful things to say about our own world.
But it goes about its telling by presenting its setting as if it were a mystery; so for the first hundred pages I’m like “The book is trying to get me to care about all this weirdness but it might was well be lol random”—all the beautiful moments in the main character’s explorations and routines, and all interesting glimpses and beautiful statues and bones, do land but they land in spite of how the book is ratcheting up tension by weirdness.
Then there’s a tiny handful of pages where I finally do figure out what’s going on and it actually does manage to be exciting and make me feel clever. Then the book becomes beyond tedious because I’ve figured it all out and am now just waiting for the outcome to unfold in the inevitable way. On a good day when I had been more clever, that turning point would’ve come sooner, and on a bad day it might’ve taken me longer.
I’m sure I’d love it more on a reread. And a reread that dives in, skips around, just enjoys the scenery and all the Narnia references. It was a charming li’l thing but I end up giving it a two out of ten. All my friends love it, it’s just me that has this “weird framework” hangup that robs me of enjoying otherwise awesome books.
I read The Three-Body Problem shortly after Piranesi. It had the same “aha!-moment turning point” structure and problem; comparing them the Three-Body Problem feels even more lolrandom before the turning point which is to its detriment, but then after the turning point the conflict and story has more uncertainty, making it more readable there. And in Piranesi my turning point came pretty early, making me feel clever-but-bored, whereas in Three-Body Problem, I didn’t figure it out until after the book pretty much spelled it out for me, making me feel stupid-and-bored. I liked it less than Piranesi.
Overall all three books are miles better than something like The Da Vinci Code, which, for all its merits, has the frustrating structure of “I looked down at the puzzle. Truly the most unsolvable puzzle of all time!” then thirty pages later “I saw the puzzle again. Hopeless and fiendish!” then thirty pages later it finally shows you the puzzle and it’s mirrored text or something and then thirty more pages later the main detective figures it out.