Such a beautiful little puzzle box of a novel. Ms Clarke does the reader few favours except by writing this novel. It is a mystery: I, at first, thought our hero was trapped in a memory palace but then it became slightly more prosaic but still engrossing as we learned more about the world he came from and how he came to be here. Completely different to Strange and Norrell (which I loved) but it does have a few similar themes in regard to how “magic” uses us rather than the other way around.