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4.15 AVERAGE
4.15 AVERAGE
Esse livro tem um espirito consideravelmente diferente daquele do primeiro na trilogia Gormenghast. Não que a personagem mais importante deixe de ser o castelo no qual se passa a narrativa, ou que deixe de lado a mistura de gótico e sátira. Mas esse volume parece ser mais sensível. Ainda que todos os personagens sejam vistos através de uma ótica ridicularizante, aqui há também um pouco de carinho. Isso é particularmente importante para as personagens femininas. Fuchsia deixa de ser uma menina boba e vazia e passa a ser vista como a personagem mais amável da história, até mesmo por seu romantismo trágico; a condessa, que na primeira parte de estória não ia além de uma louca cercada por animais, agora é uma mulher ativa e inteligente. Mesmo personagens que são ridicularizados de forma mais agressiva, como Irma e Bellgrove, tem momentos de ternura em que são humanizados. De modo geral, a leitura é lenta, focando em coisas que nem sempre são tão interessantes e fazendo outras coisas acontecerem rápido demais. Uma morte acontece de forma tão repentina que não consigo imaginar que o autor não tenha planejado desfazê-la no futuro da série. Mas, por outro lado, todas as mortes nesse livro parecem ser repentinas, e receber pouca atenção narrativa.
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
mysterious
reflective
relaxing
sad
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
This sequel to Titus Groan is even more dark, mysterious, fantastic and a wonderful story about a huge, brooding castle and it's inhabitants.
For me the castle is the star of this novel. It's vastness with neverending stories and rooms just boggle the mind. It is dark and formidable, yet cosy pockets of homes for so many people.
The coming together of Irma and Bellgrove is a brilliant part of the book, both witty and telling the story about love and relationship. While Titus Groan really does come into his own as the teenage Lord of the castle, who grows to hate Steerpike, a former kitchen slave who is single-handedly reducing the tenants, one by one...
For me the castle is the star of this novel. It's vastness with neverending stories and rooms just boggle the mind. It is dark and formidable, yet cosy pockets of homes for so many people.
The coming together of Irma and Bellgrove is a brilliant part of the book, both witty and telling the story about love and relationship. While Titus Groan really does come into his own as the teenage Lord of the castle, who grows to hate Steerpike, a former kitchen slave who is single-handedly reducing the tenants, one by one...
Take everything that was great about book one and make it better for book two. What a great book.
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
mysterious
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
adventurous
mysterious
slow-paced
adventurous
challenging
dark
mysterious
sad
tense
slow-paced
A generous 4 stars then, principally because there was a lot more intrigue to enjoy here and a lot less of the conversational styles that irritated me so much in the previous book. Still, I think fundamentally Peake doesn't write in a way I appreciate and so I finish this book more with admiration than proper enjoyment.
I feel like modern TV thrillers would have utilised Peake's work a lot in their bid to drag out a 5 episode story to 6 with utterly unbelievable twists. The finale took me the point wondering how much longer this could go on. I think unfortunately Peake's obsession with poetic descriptions can make the tenser, more action-packed parts of his story tougher to read, since it not only hampers the pace, it makes it harder to really get a mind's eye of the geography around the protagonists. This can make the sections of conflict quite chaotic at times, or did for me at any rate.
While the school masters were amusing the central story is of Titus and I think it all feels quite dated on a certain level. The notion of there being a point at which a boy experiences something that turns him into a man, etc. just feels incredibly removed from me and my thoughts. What is 'The Thing'? Are we really witnessing some kind of magic and if so, why is this the only occurrence in the books.
On top of this, the unwillingness to think about class is even stronger here. The Bright Carvers were an oddity in Titus Groan but here we discover there is actually a sizeable population with Gormenghast, even though we never get the sense of any population within the castle. And there at the social bottom are the Bright Carvers, which the book treats with a classic upper-class paternalism to the working class, patronising and looking down on them and their small-minded ways. Steerpike and Titus are, therefore, seemingly more about a dissatisfaction with the rituals and requirements of life. How incredibly upper-middle class public school to 'rebel' against the expectations of your elders but not to see the class struggle in the chance of emancipation. And so we have an Earl yearning to just leave it all behind but never really understand his own privilege.
Worth a note about Fuschia too. At the start of the book she must be 22 although Dr Prune describes her as 19 and in fact, even though she is 32 by the end she never really moves out of her position as a teenager in Titus Groan. I mentioned in my review of that book that I think there is an unconscious sexism to his treatment of women and I think this is a facet of that.
I feel like modern TV thrillers would have utilised Peake's work a lot in their bid to drag out a 5 episode story to 6 with utterly unbelievable twists. The finale took me the point wondering how much longer this could go on. I think unfortunately Peake's obsession with poetic descriptions can make the tenser, more action-packed parts of his story tougher to read, since it not only hampers the pace, it makes it harder to really get a mind's eye of the geography around the protagonists. This can make the sections of conflict quite chaotic at times, or did for me at any rate.
While the school masters were amusing the central story is of Titus and I think it all feels quite dated on a certain level. The notion of there being a point at which a boy experiences something that turns him into a man, etc. just feels incredibly removed from me and my thoughts. What is 'The Thing'? Are we really witnessing some kind of magic and if so, why is this the only occurrence in the books.
On top of this, the unwillingness to think about class is even stronger here. The Bright Carvers were an oddity in Titus Groan but here we discover there is actually a sizeable population with Gormenghast, even though we never get the sense of any population within the castle. And there at the social bottom are the Bright Carvers, which the book treats with a classic upper-class paternalism to the working class, patronising and looking down on them and their small-minded ways. Steerpike and Titus are, therefore, seemingly more about a dissatisfaction with the rituals and requirements of life. How incredibly upper-middle class public school to 'rebel' against the expectations of your elders but not to see the class struggle in the chance of emancipation. And so we have an Earl yearning to just leave it all behind but never really understand his own privilege.
Worth a note about Fuschia too. At the start of the book she must be 22 although Dr Prune describes her as 19 and in fact, even though she is 32 by the end she never really moves out of her position as a teenager in Titus Groan. I mentioned in my review of that book that I think there is an unconscious sexism to his treatment of women and I think this is a facet of that.
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
Super. Almost as good as the first but lost it a little at the very end in my mind. Really like the fact that Peake kills people you don't expect and doesn't linger on it.
I wanted the sinister Steerpike to come out on top all the way through, and I'm not sure what that says about me.
4.5 stars (just dropped the 5 in the last 100 pages or so).
I wanted the sinister Steerpike to come out on top all the way through, and I'm not sure what that says about me.
4.5 stars (just dropped the 5 in the last 100 pages or so).
challenging
dark
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I liked the first book - Titus Groan, but this one didn't grab me as much. It took me ages to read and only really enjoyed the last 150 pages or so. All the characters are grotesque caricatures. As always the stand out feature is Gormenghast itself, the weird shambolic medieval castle-town with it's ridiculous pageantry.