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I loved this one!

It's the story of "Piranesi", as written in his diary. Piranesi lives in a place he calls the house, which is filled with halls and rooms, no two of which are the same, and with statues all over the place. There are clouds in the upper level of the house, and water in the lower levels, water which sometimes floods the middle levels. As far as Piranesi knows, he has alwas lived in the house, and the only other person we meet is the Other, who meets with Piranesi once a week, but who's whereabouts the rest of the time are unknown.

The quickly suspects things are not quite as Piranesi describes them, and the rest of the plot consists of Piranesi finding his place in the world again.

I loved the prose and the setting of this one, and there were a number of callouts to C. S. Lewis' works, which thematically fit the work really well.

A story of the Roman empire with a focus on the role of climate and disease in the fate of the empire, or rather their role in constraining the course of development of the empire.

The book covers three pandemics and a few climate shifts, as well as a multitude of smaller epidemics and disease outbreaks, and stands as a superb example of how to use science in history writing. Harper introduces a lot of objective evidence, from tree rings to bone lengths, and he's very good at showing where the evidence points, as well as explaining when there are gaps in the record and things we do not know.

It wasn't the book's main focus, but the book also made me realise just how far east and south Rome and its influence stretched, with evidence being provided that Rome and China knew about each other. Similarly it helped me remember just how long Roman influence in the mediterranean lasted: the last subsidized grain shipment from Alexandria to Constantinople was in the 7th century, and much of the middle east and northern africa was still linked to the byzantine empire until the islamic conquests!