Books like Piranesi, according to Reddit

The read-alike list

Ranked by co-mention strength — how often each book shares a thread with Piranesi, normalized so ubiquitous books don't dominate.

#1

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

Susanna Clarke

England forgets it ever had real magic, until one book-obsessed magician brings the practical kind back from decades of theory-only study.

77 shared threads

#2

The Fifth Season

N. K. Jemisin

An orogene comes home to find her son beaten to death and her daughter gone, the same day a continent starts splitting apart.

79 shared threads

#3

Project Hail Mary

Andy Weir

A dying astronaut wakes up alone on a spaceship with amnesia, two corpses for company, and Earth's one shot at survival riding on him.

82 shared threads

#4

Cloud Atlas

David Mitchell

Six lives across centuries, from a dying composer to a cloned waitress, each get half their story told before the book loops back to finish every one.

37 shared threads

#5

Station Eleven

Emily St. John Mandel

A flu wipes out civilization overnight, and twenty years later a traveling troupe performs Shakespeare in the ruins for gas-station towns.

47 shared threads

#6

All Systems Red (The Murderbot Diaries)

Martha Wells

A security android with no interest in gender, romance, or heroics just wants to watch its shows, and ends up saving its clients from a conspiracy anyway.

104 shared threads

#7

The Left Hand of Darkness

Ursula K. Le Guin

A human envoy crosses a glacier on foot with the one alien on the planet capable of ambisexuality, and neither of them trusts the other yet.

85 shared threads

#8

A Wizard of Earthsea

Ursula K. Le Guin

A proud boy on a poor island learns real magic, casts one spell out of arrogance, and spends the rest of the book hunted by what it let loose.

48 shared threads

#9

The Dispossessed

Ursula K. Le Guin

A physicist from an anarchist moon travels to the capitalist planet his people fled, carrying a theory of time that could unite both worlds or arm one of them.

71 shared threads

#10

Hyperion

Dan Simmons

Seven pilgrims travel together to a planet that kills, each one carrying the private story of why they volunteered to go.

108 shared threads

#11

Never Let Me Go

Kazuo Ishiguro

Three friends grow up in a quiet English boarding school where everything is normal except the one thing nobody explains to them.

33 shared threads

#12

Mexican Gothic

Silvia Moreno-Garcia

A young socialite travels to a remote Mexican mansion to check on her newly married cousin and finds the walls, and the family living inside them, aren't done growing.

12 shared threads

The overlap, in numbers

Where each pairing actually shows up. Click through for the full Reddit verdict on each book.

1. #1 Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke — 77 shared threads , mostly in r/printSF
2. #2 The Fifth Season by N. K. Jemisin — 79 shared threads , mostly in r/printSF
3. #3 Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir — 82 shared threads , mostly in r/printSF
4. #4 Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell — 37 shared threads , mostly in r/printSF
5. #5 Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel — 47 shared threads , mostly in r/printSF
6. #6 All Systems Red (The Murderbot Diaries) by Martha Wells — 104 shared threads , mostly in r/printSF
7. #7 The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin — 85 shared threads , mostly in r/printSF
8. #8 A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin — 48 shared threads , mostly in r/printSF
9. #9 The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin — 71 shared threads , mostly in r/printSF
10. #10 Hyperion by Dan Simmons — 108 shared threads , mostly in r/printSF
11. #11 Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro — 33 shared threads , mostly in r/printSF
12. #12 Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia — 12 shared threads , mostly in r/printSF