Rating: 
Summary: once visited Peake's world will never leave you
Review: This book has been visited by me three times in my life, once in my teens, again in my late twenties and now in my early 40's. Each reading has put me back in touch with one of the most startling, darkly humorous imaginations I have encountered in my reading life. It's labyrinthine in more than the sense that the castle of Gormenghast is, the language is crystalline,lucid and yet almost leisurely in its haunting descriptions. There's a sense of futility in the final volume that suggested to me Peake's own disillusionment with the way things had progressed with his own life. I hope he was proud of Titus as I've loved his world and wish I could tell him.
Rating: 
Summary: Superb!!
Review: This book is not for everyone. Don't read it if you're expecting another "Lord of the Rings", or something like one of the innumerable Tolkien imitations that have been written in the last 20 years. It is something quite different. I was literally mesmerized as I read this book and it's follow up, "Gormenghast". The beautiful prose transports one to a strangely fascinating land populated with bizarre characters who never the less are very human. The reader feels for these sad people, trapped in a world of complicated, arcane rituals. A light hearted escape it is not, but for those with a taste for the unusual, this is a very rewarding read. I would think that anyone who enjoys Terry Gilliam's movies would like these books.
Rating:
Summary: Superb Fantasy
Review: This book, and it's follow up, "Gormenghast", constitute a towering achievement in the field of fantastic literature. Peake creates an utterly engrossing and complex alternate world with these books. Most fantasy novels on the market today seem pedestrian by comparison.
Rating:
Summary: Gormenghast
Review: this is the best book i have ever read!! Unfortunately the last book 'Titus Alone' isn't as good!!READ THIS!! NOW!!
Rating:
Summary: A superior work that deserves to be in print again!
Review: This is for folks ready to graduate from Tolkein. A fully realized world packed with fascinating and complex characters wrought in beautiful and moving imagery, a plot spellbinding in its intricacy, and a sense of detail and depth that makes Robert Jordan look like Walt Disney. And you must read the second book, which adds to the depth and wonder of Peake's creation, and the astonishing third, which stands everything to come before on its head. I return regularly to Amazon for no reason other than to see if these books are back in print, for my old copies are completely worn out!
Rating:
Summary: A rave over a grand book I greatly admire.
Review: This is one of the, if not the best, work of fantasy I have the privilege of reading. The imagery is haunting, beautiful
and at times horrific, yet splendid all the same.The work is
one of a man drunk upon the beauty of words, in love with the
way they can be made to fit. Imagine, if you will, a different
world, choked in age, stifled by ritual, hung over with shadow
but suffused with beauty.Picture a huge, gigantic,ramshackle of masonry called Gormenghast castle, populated by grotesques
whose acts and fears and feeling and thoughts are no less seemingly real for their bizarreness. Meet the faithful servant Flay, along with
his ponderously fat and murderous rival, the cook Swelter. Pity the lonely and insane Lord Sepulchrave, and his poor daughter Fuschia. Be introduced to the loquacious Dr. Prunesquallor, and his pretentious sister, Irma of black glasses and flat bodice. See the evil youth Steerpike begin a ruthless quest
for power fired by his hate, and the infant hero, Titus Groan ascend his throne. These are but a few of the oddities clambering about within the Walls of Gormenghast.
Why don't you enter for yourself? You won't regret it.
Rating:
Summary: A rave over a grand book I greatly admire.
Review: This is one of the, if not the best, work of fantasy I have the privilege of reading. The imagery is haunting, beautifuland at times horrific, yet splendid all the same.The work is one of a man drunk upon the beauty of words, in love with the way they can be made to fit. Imagine, if you will, a different world, choked in age, stifled by ritual, hung over with shadow but suffused with beauty.Picture a huge, gigantic,ramshackle of masonry called Gormenghast castle, populated by grotesques whose acts and fears and feeling and thoughts are no less seemingly real for their bizarreness. Meet the faithful servant Flay, along with his ponderously fat and murderous rival, the cook Swelter. Pity the lonely and insane Lord Sepulchrave, and his poor daughter Fuschia. Be introduced to the loquacious Dr. Prunesquallor, and his pretentious sister, Irma of black glasses and flat bodice. See the evil youth Steerpike begin a ruthless quest for power fired by his hate, and the infant hero, Titus Groan ascend his throne. These are but a few of the oddities clambering about within the Walls of Gormenghast. Why don't you enter for yourself? You won't regret it.
Rating:
Summary: Oh, yeah....
Review: This is one of those excellent books that I have been fortunate enough to find. I actually picked it up while in the waning stage of my annual Tolkien revival, hoping to find some similar fantasy. I was pleasantly surprised to find a story that was nothing like our present day conception of celtic/teutonic based fantasy. In fact, this book is so completely different that it reminds me more of Dickens's The Old Curiosity Shoppe than anything. Yet I believe, yes, I believe that I prefer this book to anything Dickens. Peake is a beautiful artisan of prose, but he also has a humerous bite to his language that plays strongly off the parody stereotypes introduced in this epic. I'm not British, but I cannot help but wonder if the English see this book as a parody of their monarchy. This may answer the reason for Titus's popularity in England, whereas we Americans don't seem to pay Gormenghast the attention it deserves. So if you are into GOOD fantasy, read this book; and when I say GOOD fantasy, I'm refering to Tolkien, not the novel-a-minute writers whom we see so often at present. This book also takes a bit of work, so if you don't like Dickens, you probably won't like Peake.
Rating:
Summary: Gormenghast
Review: this is the best book i have ever read!! Unfortunately the last book 'Titus Alone' isn't as good!! READ THIS!! NOW!!
Rating:
Summary: An enormous pleasure to read.
Review: This is the first book of the Gormenghast trilogy (before Gormenghast and Titus Alone). The castle of Gormenghast is a huge, maze-like fortress built on the side of a mountain. It's surrounded by a tall wall, that helps keep the noble "Castle" people and their menials inside, and the "Bright Carvers", a tribal people who live in mud dwellings, outside on the arid plain. In this first volume, we're introduced to the castle's inhabitants, amidst the bustle of Titus the seventy-seventh Earl's birth, and a few days later, of his christening. There's the melancholic Lord Sepulchrave, the seventy-sixth and current Earl of Groan, his enormous wife Gertrude and her white cats, and their teenage daughter Fuchsia. And there is Mrs. Slagg, the frail old Nanny who's always complaning about her poor heart, and Mr. Flay, the Earl's tall first servant with the clicking knees. And also Mr. Rottcodd, curator of the Hall of Bright Carvings, and Sourdust the Librarian, guardian of the Protocol. Doctor Prunesquallor with his nervous laughter, and his spinsterly sister Irma, as well as Swelter the tyrannic cook and his kitchen boys, among which the young Steerpike. Then come Cora and Clarice, the Earl's asinine twin sisters, envious of his and Gertrude's power... and a few others. As the story flows, we watch these numerous protagonists interact, as Steerpike slowly works his way up the ranks of the castle. Charming high-born ladies, plotting arson, nothing daunts him. And what was a so well-greased, fine-tuned machine of minutiae and protocol, the very essence of Gormenghast, is starting to crumble slowly and inexorably. It's very hard to summarize Titus Groan in a couple of paragraphs. It's so brimming with court intrigue and mischief, interspaced with lush descriptions of this amazingly intricate fortress where I wanted to escape to, or play hide and seek in. As a whole, all I can say it that it was an enormous pleasure to read and that I can't wait to read the next book.
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