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4.15 AVERAGE
4.15 AVERAGE
adventurous
challenging
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
I got to the end of Chapter 21, and although I was loving it, I suddenly was in the mood for something totally different so I read the rest of the plot on Wikipedia.
(Update: After reading this book last year, I chose to give it 4 stars, my argument being that I was detracting one star for the slow pacing. Then at the beginning of 2010, I determined that Gormenghast was #2 on my "10 Goodest Reads From 2009" list. (China Mieville's The Scar came in #1.) So, umm, I'm retroactively giving this'n five stars, because I was clearly on crack when I didn't give it 5 before. Below is the review of the book, which hasn't been changed.)
At Gormenghast castle--a castle so sprawling and gargantuan that huge sections have fallen into disrepair and been forgotten entirely; a castle where the Queen wanders the halls silently with hundreds of white cats following her; a castle where everyone (almost everyone) follows rituals so old that none know their meaning any longer; a castle where teachers sleep through class periods while students invent dangerous games and hide the bodies of any children that die during them--Titus Groan is growing up. He's to be the king of Gormenghast, but he quickly grows to detest the meaningless rituals that infect his every day.
As Titus rebels against his station, Steerpike continues his political ascent. And, unlike most villains, Steerpike changes in very unpleasant ways as he continues to sacrifice his scruples for greater power. By the end of this book, the bizarre upstart from the first novel has become quite a frightening figure.
The Gormenghast trilogy is something very unique in fantasy. It has all the originality one could want from a fantasy world. And it is truly character-driven. Although the characters feel at first like funhouse mirror distortions of real people (in large part due to their farcical names and often distorted physical features), they begin to feel much more real as the book progresses.
Also, the story is amazing. Although it would be impossible to predict what was going to happen early on, everything fits together and seems inevitable when looking back after it's all over. It's epic; it's sad; it's hilarious; it's entirely original, and the writing is often amazing. It's an understatement to say Mervyn Peake has a way with words.
One of the faults I see isn't really that much of a fault, and more just a comment: one particular side-plot absorbs much of the first half of the book. In the end, this side-plot doesn't seem necessary. But, that part of the story provides a humorous diversion from the gloomy main storyline, where bodies are piling up and characters are not so very happy. My one complaint is the pace of the book. This book is, like Titus Groan, quite slow. And, again, I noticed the slowness at the time I should most NOT be noticing it: when suspense was building for the climax. The climax took forever.
This book is very close to five stars. But, since it suffers from the same fault as the first novel, I'm witholding one star. And I'm curious to see what happens in the final volume of the trilogy, especially with all of the changes that happened in Gormenghast. I'll definitely be finishing this series soon.
I really didn't think this one was quite as strong as Titus Groan. The setting was, of course, still lavishly described and the characters were great. The plot even moved a bit faster. But I did feel like Peake was trying too hard to hold the reader's hand with this one. There were lots of weird moments where he would over-explain fairly obvious symbolism and kinda repeat himself. It wouldn't have been a big deal, if the first one hadn't been so precise about showing, not telling. Kind of a bummer.
(Also, I did not enjoy Titus as a protagonist - but that might just be me)
On to Titus Alone! Maybe that will be better? Probably not, if it's just Titus... as the title implies. Poop.
(Also, I did not enjoy Titus as a protagonist - but that might just be me)
On to Titus Alone! Maybe that will be better? Probably not, if it's just Titus... as the title implies. Poop.
adventurous
dark
emotional
mysterious
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Working hard to love this series, but it may not be in me.
I am enthralled by Peake's loquacious style, his dramatistic moments of close-camera characterizations. While they are not as creative or startling as they were in the first volume, this work adds new characters who are equally enigmatic, frustrating in their function. What I have difficulty adjusting to is, still a sense of incoherence to the narrative itself. Yes, there is a plot of sorts, but the events that compose it are both disjointed or disunited and thereby difficult to trace significance. Random weather, accidents, and fortuitous turns of the head . . . these cause events which follow, but they do not hold much gravity. The gravity of the work comes from its atmosphere, the readerly experience, the wonder of Titus, Fuschia, or of Steepike.
I am enthralled by Peake's loquacious style, his dramatistic moments of close-camera characterizations. While they are not as creative or startling as they were in the first volume, this work adds new characters who are equally enigmatic, frustrating in their function. What I have difficulty adjusting to is, still a sense of incoherence to the narrative itself. Yes, there is a plot of sorts, but the events that compose it are both disjointed or disunited and thereby difficult to trace significance. Random weather, accidents, and fortuitous turns of the head . . . these cause events which follow, but they do not hold much gravity. The gravity of the work comes from its atmosphere, the readerly experience, the wonder of Titus, Fuschia, or of Steepike.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Violence
March 2017 Edit: re-read for a book-club. Still astonishing.
----
This was, not to put too fine a point on it, bloody marvellous. Within its overall marveltudinosity there was a passage of such sublime wonderment that, I think, it may just be my favourite passage ever. I was going to link to it but, I feel, you deserve to receive it in its entire resplendence here.
Indulge me, won't you, for it's rather a lengthy piece but it's for your own benefit and general betterment. Here it is, in full.
----
And the days move on and the names of the months change and the four seasons bury one another and it is spring again and yet again and the small streams that run over the rough sides of Gormenghast Mountain are big with rain while the days lengthen and summer sprawls across the countryside, sprawls in all the swathes of its green, with its gold and sticky head, with its slumber and the drone of doves and with its butterflies and its lizards and its sunflowers, over and over again, its doves, its butterflies, its lizards, its sunflowers, each one an echo-child while the fruit ripens and the grotesque boles of the ancient apple trees are dappled in the low rays of the sun and the air smells of such rotten sweetness as brings a hunger to the breast, and makes of the heart a sea-bed, and a tear, the fruit of salt and water, ripens, fed by a summer sorrow, ripens and falls... falls gradually along the cheekbones, wanders over the wastelands listlessly, the loveliest emblem of the heart's condition.
And the days move on and the names of the months change and the four seasons bury one another and the field-mice draw upon their granaries. The air is murky, and the sun is like a raw wound in the grimy flesh of a beggar, and the rags of the clouds are clotted. The sky has been stabbed and has been left to die above the world, filthy, vast and bloody. And then the great winds come and the sky is blown naked, and a wild bird screams across the glittering land. And the Countess stands at the window of her room with the white cats at her feet and stares at the frozen landscape spread below her, and a year later she is standing there again but the cats are abroad in the valleys and a raven sits upon her heavy shoulder.
And every day the myriad happenings. A loosened stone falls from a high tower. A fly drops lifeless from a broken pane. A sparrow twitters in a cave of ivy.
The days wear out the months and the months wear out the years, and a flux of moments, like an unquiet tide, eats at the black coast of futurity.
And Titus Groan is wading through his boyhood.
----
And while that is a scintillatingly magnificent piece of writing, such is the quality of the rest of the book that it doesn't raise its head too much above the flood waters of the general inundation of narrative brilliance.
I think that I will stop reading Gormenghast here, at least for a long time. The ending feels like a natural underlining of the text, a "here and no further" high-water mark, that to carry on past this point is to invite, nay actively court, disappointment and disillusionment (much as I should have stopped at the end of season 4 of Breaking Bad).
Yes, here and no further, I think.
----
This was, not to put too fine a point on it, bloody marvellous. Within its overall marveltudinosity there was a passage of such sublime wonderment that, I think, it may just be my favourite passage ever. I was going to link to it but, I feel, you deserve to receive it in its entire resplendence here.
Indulge me, won't you, for it's rather a lengthy piece but it's for your own benefit and general betterment. Here it is, in full.
----
And the days move on and the names of the months change and the four seasons bury one another and it is spring again and yet again and the small streams that run over the rough sides of Gormenghast Mountain are big with rain while the days lengthen and summer sprawls across the countryside, sprawls in all the swathes of its green, with its gold and sticky head, with its slumber and the drone of doves and with its butterflies and its lizards and its sunflowers, over and over again, its doves, its butterflies, its lizards, its sunflowers, each one an echo-child while the fruit ripens and the grotesque boles of the ancient apple trees are dappled in the low rays of the sun and the air smells of such rotten sweetness as brings a hunger to the breast, and makes of the heart a sea-bed, and a tear, the fruit of salt and water, ripens, fed by a summer sorrow, ripens and falls... falls gradually along the cheekbones, wanders over the wastelands listlessly, the loveliest emblem of the heart's condition.
And the days move on and the names of the months change and the four seasons bury one another and the field-mice draw upon their granaries. The air is murky, and the sun is like a raw wound in the grimy flesh of a beggar, and the rags of the clouds are clotted. The sky has been stabbed and has been left to die above the world, filthy, vast and bloody. And then the great winds come and the sky is blown naked, and a wild bird screams across the glittering land. And the Countess stands at the window of her room with the white cats at her feet and stares at the frozen landscape spread below her, and a year later she is standing there again but the cats are abroad in the valleys and a raven sits upon her heavy shoulder.
And every day the myriad happenings. A loosened stone falls from a high tower. A fly drops lifeless from a broken pane. A sparrow twitters in a cave of ivy.
The days wear out the months and the months wear out the years, and a flux of moments, like an unquiet tide, eats at the black coast of futurity.
And Titus Groan is wading through his boyhood.
----
And while that is a scintillatingly magnificent piece of writing, such is the quality of the rest of the book that it doesn't raise its head too much above the flood waters of the general inundation of narrative brilliance.
I think that I will stop reading Gormenghast here, at least for a long time. The ending feels like a natural underlining of the text, a "here and no further" high-water mark, that to carry on past this point is to invite, nay actively court, disappointment and disillusionment (much as I should have stopped at the end of season 4 of Breaking Bad).
Yes, here and no further, I think.
adventurous
mysterious
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I was rooting for Steerpike the whole time, especially when he started killing random people to satisfy his lust for murder
adventurous
dark
mysterious
reflective
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
adventurous
dark
mysterious
reflective
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