Piranesi's new cover

[pretty_plant]

The Piranesi's cover features a satyr-ish figure, which reminds me of Greek mythology. Coupled that with the description about Piranensi on Amazon, which compares the book to Miller's Circe, I wonder whether Piranesi will have some Greek/Roman mythologies' elements in it. It will not surprise me if it will have those elements. Clarke mostly stuck to fairy tales and history in JSMN but the Gentleman did mention Persephone once in chapter 42. Because I am fanatic for Greek/ Roman mythologies and religions, this makes me even more excited for the book, which should not be possible.

That description on Amazon can be found here: https://www.amazon.com/Piranesi-Susanna-Clarke/dp/163557563X

Comments

[pretty_plant]

There is only about 7 months left! We can survive until that, can't we?

I was thinking about preordering Piranesi on Amazon Kindle but decided against it because I was afraid it was too soon and would make me unnecessarily excited.

[regshoe]

Oh, I know :D All of the folklore stuff in JSMN is so good, I'd absolutely love to see what Clarke makes of classical mythology.

[pretty_plant]

It is pretty hard to look into Western stuffs without at least encountering something inspired by the Greeks and the Romans.

I suddenly remembered that Susanna Clarke did write a short story inspired by Greek mythology once, The Dweller in High Places. The setting of the story is very similar to JSMN's with a very English narrative voice but it had the Sphinx instead of fairies. So we know that Clarke could offer a pretty nice short story inspired by classical mythology.

All this theorizing makes me really wonder how Piranesi will be like. All of Clarke's stories so far have been mostly about the same time period or at least the same place. However, she might have researched other things in ten-year time and become interested in other matters.

[regshoe]

I've not read 'The Dweller In High Places'—perhaps I'll check it out for the sake of more theorising, which is always fun... :D

All of Clarke's stories so far have been mostly about the same time period or at least the same place. However, she might have researched other things in ten-year time and become interested in other matters. I'm sure she has! I think her short stories show a lot of versatility in style, although the settings are fairly similar, so I am very excited to see what she'll do with something that sounds like it could be quite different.

Edit because I've just found some more material for theorising: I just went on the Blackwell's website to investigate pre-ordering options and saw that, as well as the front cover, they have a picture of the end papers, which have a pattern of little animals—bees, starfish, various molluscs. I hope this means the book is going to have some sort of natural history element to it, because that is highly relevant to my interests and sounds amazing :D

[pretty_plant]

They look so cute.

The book is about ocean so I bet we are going to see sea creatures mentioned a lot. I wonder what a satyr has to do with ocean, though.

The Dweller in High Places was first broadcast in 2007, after JSMN's publication. I am theorizing that she wrote it out of her growing interest for classical mythology, which finally culminated in Piranesi. She might do an interview later that proves me wrong but for now, this is my theory.