phantomtomato

I loved Piranesi! I can see how it could have crossover appeal for genre and non-genre readers. As a fantasy reader I didn't find it disappointing or jarring at all. A lot of fantasy has strong connections to the real world, not just portal fantasies but also wainscot/urban fantasies where magic coexists alongside contemporary society, or ones where it turns out what you think is a secondary world is actually our own world far in the past or far in the future. In the case of Piranesi specifically, the world you're dropped into is so surreal and allegorical-feeling from the start that I don't think I ever had the expectation that it was an independent secondary world.