Titus Groan: The Gormenghast Trilogy, Book 1
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Titus Groan: The Gormenghast Trilogy, Book 1
Mervyn Peake
Fantasy & Science Fiction
James Mustich
Sep 8, 2018
Mervyn Peake lurks in the shadows of literature like a forgotten enchanter obscured by the main action of a fantasy sequence. In the royalty of the genre, one might even see him as J. R. R. Tolkien’s dispossessed brother, ruling a realm wilder than the one the creator of The Lord of the Rings commanded. But anyone of an expressive temperament or taste—admiring, say, the caricatural genius of Dickens and the inherent fatedness of Melville, or possessing a fondness for the Gothic or the baroque—will wander into Peake’s imaginative realm with wonder, and likely return to it again and again. In this trilogy, Gormenghast, a distant domain in the keeping of a noble family named Groan, is dominated by a vast and crumbling castle, a presence as unforgettable as any of the characters. Into this stony, tapestried, haunted demesne—self-sufficient and self-perpetuating, xenophobically tradition bound, its days marked with pointless rituals—is born Titus Groan, a star-crossed heir to the ancestral line. By the time we reach the end of the volume that bears his name, Titus is barely a toddler, but we have become fully enmeshed in the alliances and rivalries of Gormenghast, and seen Steerpike, the uncontainable ambitious kitchen boy, evolve from an innocuous lackey into a villainous power behind the throne, fueled with malice Shakespearean in its vivid characterization.
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DreesReads
Nov 4, 2018
The world building in this novel is amazing!
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