Titus Groan...

dr gonzo

Ive had this book for a couple of years now, it seems right up my alley and i like what ive leafed through in it so far but i just cant stick at it.

Is it every bit as brilliant as people say it is? because if its a brilliant book that just takes a bit of getting into ill definitely go back to it.

Elliemental

The Gormenghast trilogy is nothing short of genius, in my humble opinnion. I personally feel that it was a great tragedy that Mervyn Peake never really did get the full recognition he deserved for it. Add to that the travesty that the trilogy gets fobbed off as just another fantasy job (a genre it totally transcends btw). However, the third book in the series (Titus Alone) does fall down quite badly (Peake had become somewhat `bewildered` at the time of writing it.
You don`t say if you`re planning on reading the whole thing so I`ll not go into the plot at all. But do stick with it, it`s a wonderful read on the whole. Whatever you do though, avoid the BBC`s adaptation (starring Jonathon Rhy Meyers), it was bloody horrific.

dr gonzo

Elliemental wrote: »

The Gormenghast trilogy is nothing short of genius, in my humble opinnion. I personally feel that it was a great tragedy that Mervyn Peake never really did get the full recognition he deserved for it. Add to that the travesty that the trilogy gets fobbed off as just another fantasy job (a genre it totally transcends btw). However, the third book in the series (Titus Alone) does fall down quite badly (Peake had become somewhat `bewildered` at the time of writing it.
You don`t say if you`re planning on reading the whole thing so I`ll not go into the plot at all. But do stick with it, it`s a wonderful read on the whole. Whatever you do though, avoid the BBC`s adaptation (starring Jonathon Rhy Meyers), it was bloody horrific.

Thats great thanks. Ill certainly try and give it a good go when i have some spare time. Ill decide on the rest of the trilogy based of the first. Thanks again.

ixoy

I love fantasy, read hundreds of thousands of pages of the stuff most likely, and the Gormenghast trilogy still stands out. It's not typical fantasy and has none of the archetypes or tropes of the genre. The haunting city castle is indeed a character itself, and the malevolent Steerpike is a great villain. Peake's a skilled writer and he really seems to breathe life into what is in essence a series of buildings, images that are still with me.

I'll put it another way - I'm reading a sci-fi book now ("House of Sun") where, in the prologue, a character lives in a house of a million rooms. Immediately I'm transplanted back to Gormenghast again. Or when I was in the Guinness tower a couple of years ago, both myself and another looked out at the sloping roofs and different architecture in the walls and thought of Gormenghast. It's still with me today.

boogle

Brilliant book as far I'm concerned! That opening paragraph or two just had me hooked. It's like taking a holiday to a parallel universe, you feel like you can reach out and touch it. Read it!