A doomed lord, an emergent hero, and an array of bizarre creatures haunt the world of the Gormenghast novels which, along with Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, reigns as one of the undisputed fantasy classics of all time. Peake has created a world where all is like a dream—lush, fantastical, vivid, and yet symbolic of a dark struggle.
At the center of everything is the seventy-seventh earl, Titus Groan, who stands to inherit the Gormenghast Castle and its kingdom. Inside, all events are predetermined by a complex ritual whose origins are lost in history, and the castle is peopled by dark characters in half-lit corridors. When Titus is crowned, he is called "Child-Inheritor of the rivers, of the Tower of Flints and the dark recesses beneath cold stairways…Child-Inheritor of the spring breezes that blow in from the jarl forests and of the autumn misery in petal, scale, and wing."
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"Not the easiest writer to read the darkness of the storyline and the stream of unlovable characters do not make for light reading. I found the BBC interpretation very good and a lot more watchable than reading all the books. " — Dutch (4 out of 5 stars)
"Not the easiest writer to read the darkness of the storyline and the stream of unlovable characters do not make for light reading. I found the BBC interpretation very good and a lot more watchable than reading all the books. "
“[Peake’s books] are actual additions to life; they give, like certain rare dreams, sensations we never had before, and enlarge our conception of the range of possible experience.”
“Mervyn Peake is a finer poet than Edgar Allan Poe, and he is therefore able to maintain his world of fantasy brilliantly through three novels. It is a very, very great work…A classic of our age.”
“[Simon Vance] is calm and fastidious-voiced in third person narration, giving us time to revel in the book’s surreal description and ghastly ambience…In the book’s dialogue, however, he takes on the Gormenghast menagerie with brio and versatility, giving each character a distinctive, appropriate voice…Overall his narration is a masterly rendition of a lurid and haunting work.”
“A darkly humorous, stunningly complex tale…This true classic is a feast of words unlike anything else in the world of fantasy. Those who explore Gormenghast castle will be richly rewarded.”
" The sort of fantasy book that someone who loved Lord of the Rings and wants more of the same style would want to read. Luckily, that's me! I really enjoyed this book. "
" Think a collaboration between Lovecraft and Huysmans for British children. "
" Another one (along with Lord of the Rings) where I liked the story but found the actual experience of reading so very very dull. "
" Love this book, but not as much as I love book two which is AMAZING! I couldn't find it anywhere on here though. Where is the second novel to the Titus Groan series? "
" First read in 1991. Have read it since and it's still good. "
" I think this is one of my top five favorite books right now. There's nothing else I've read quite like it. It's beautifully written, dripping with imagination, semisatirical, and every character is a delight. "
Mervyn Laurence Peake (1911–1968) is an author best known for his Gormenghast fantasy fiction trilogy. He also published illustrated verse and short stories for children, plays, short stories, and novels. He was awarded the W. H. Heinemann Foundation Prize by the Royal Society of Literature in 1950. He was born and raised in China until the age of eleven. He went on to study at the Royal Academy School in London, where he developed as an artist, designer, and writer. He worked as an artist on the island of Sark for several years and then returned to London to hold several exhibitions of his artwork.
Simon Vance (a.k.a. Robert Whitfield) is an award-winning actor and narrator. He has earned more than fifty Earphones Awards and won the prestigious Audie Award for best narration thirteen times. He was named Booklist’s very first Voice of Choice in 2008 and has been named an AudioFile Golden Voice as well as an AudioFile Best Voice of 2009. He has narrated more than eight hundred audiobooks over almost thirty years, beginning when he was a radio newsreader for the BBC in London. He is also an actor who has appeared on both stage and television.
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