A review by octavia_cade
Titus Alone by Mervyn Peake

5.0

Despite my unending love for this series, I have to admit that Titus Alone is not quite as brilliant as the first two volumes. Peake's descent into mortal illness is all too apparent, and he simply didn't have the time to create something with the depth and breadth of Titus Groan or Gormenghast. It's one of the great literary tragedies, I think, that he died so young and so horribly, unable to truly finish what is one of the finest fantasy series of all time. But despite the lack, much of which, it has to be said, comes from the absence of Gormenghast Castle itself, there's still moments of real power here. Cheeta's recreation of Gormenghast at the Black House is both chilling and genuinely horrific, and Muzzlehatch is one of the few characters drawn sharply enough to compare with earlier inhabitants. And Titus himself, who has always been less than what was around him, begins to understand just what it means to have walked away from Gormenghast, what he has given up and will forever yearn for.

Because this series ended before its time we'll never know the ending Peake had planned for it - how Titus reconciles himself, if he can, to Gormenghast and destiny. But the sense of that great castle, crouched and waiting, survives... it permeates the text, making it something that Titus can never truly escape, and I like to think that, in the end that might have been, he never really wanted to.