Rating: 
Summary: Don't be fooled by the ratings.
Review: After an hour and 40 minutes I had to shut the tape off. Seems as though the writer has forgotten that the plot is the most important piece of a book. Total torture. Goes nowhere. Dont do it and dont EVER compare this to Tolkien.
Rating: 
Summary: A haunting read
Review: My mother told me that the book was worth reading a few years ago, but she had never finished it herself. I have never been able to understand how she put it down and forgot about it - to me that seems impossible. From the start I was transfixed by the twisted, stagnant air that arose from the book, with the characters immersed in their strange lives and rituals. It was totally engulfing, and I immediently placed it with my favourite books of all time. Through all the perverse reason and decided weirdness about the characters you cannot help feeing a strange empathy for them, and Peake's take on humanity cracks through. The Gormenghast trilogy are those sort of books that grab you somewhere inside and pull you through the chapters. Then, when you are finished, they don't let you go, but stay with you. I have always judged whether I truly enjoyed a book by the effect it has on me afterwards. If I continue to think about it a few books on, I know that I loved it. And these books have continued to haunt my mind ever since I picked the first one up.
Rating: 
Summary: Do you really like fantasy?
Review: I certainly won't say that "You don't REALLY like fantasy if you don't like this book." However, giving this book a try will help you self-identify, as to whether you want "The same again, please" as a fantasy reader, or, instead, might be ready to explore a new world of the imagination that exploits the freedom inherent in the genre.There's hardly a more slowly-paced book in the language; perhaps the best way to approach it is in the expectation of a long series of vivid, strange scenes. I hesitate to use the word "surrealistic," because that often has the connotation of sexual neurosis (real or pretended). The comparisons with Dickens are apt, but the closest analogue known to me might be Gogol's masterpiece (read it in the delightful Pevear-Volokohonsky translation), DEAD SOULS. In both books you have the idea of people who live in isolation (the Gormenghasters in various nooks of the Castle and its environs; Gogol's oddities being residents of isolated Russian estates before the abolition of serfdom). Both authors enjoyed concocting weirdly funny names for characters. Both authors "withhold" -- Peake keeping the narrative pace so slow that Titus is only 1 1/2 at the end of the book; Gogol keeping us in the dark about Chichikov's scheme. Both authors have deceptive rogues as main characters (Steerpike, Chichikov). Both did relish a kind of bizarre vividness. Finally, Nabokov's little book on Gogol says that the Russian concept of "posholost" is central for Gogol: meaning that something is outwardly impressive or charming, but really is second-rate or worse, is empty, is life-diminishing. That fits the Gormenghast rituals. Frankly, if you've never read Gogol's comic masterpiece, you should consider giving that one a try; but if you love fantasy, you ought to look into Peake, too. There are a few places where Peake's imagination doesn't seem engaged: the Keda-Rantel-Braigon thing is not successful. But that takes up maybe 25 pages at most.
Rating:
Summary: A life-changing book
Review: Well do I remember the momentous day in 1975 when a good friend loaned me a copy of Titus Groan and suggested I might enjoy it. Enjoy it? I was hooked from that first glimpse of the Hall of Bright Carvings; utterly transfixed by strange but compelling stories of the denizens of Gormenghast: a weird place and weird people, to be sure, but not so weird as to be beyond recognition. Peake's prose is masterful throughout; his characters are so profoundly realised that you really do feel you know them: Fuschia, Prunesquallor, Steerpike, Titus himself, my personal hero Mr Flay...wonderful. The narrative has been critized for being ponderous, but bear in mind this is a "big read" and it is best absorbed at a steady pace. The action, when it comes, is all the more startling: consider the cobweb-strewn battle to the death between Flay and the loathsome Swelter, and in Gormenghast, Titus's deadly encounter with Steerpike (now evil personified) amid the stifling ivy. "Titus Groan" and "Gormenghast" are famously more satisfying than "Titus Alone", written when Peake was seriously ill and fading fast, but even "Titus Alone" has some strangely affecting characters and situations. Its strangeness is more disturbing than the first two books however, which are totally enthralling. Since that first encounter over 25 years ago I have re-read this trilogy many, many times, always with more enjoyment than the time before. I made a chess-set with characters from the book (grey scrubbers make great pawns) and have enlivened many a dull day at work by likening some of my colleagues (in my minds eye, of course) to some of Peake's so-called grotesques...the Civil Service is not without its Barquentines and Sourdusts, not to mention the Deadyawns and Cutflowers! This is one book (along with the Bible) I would just not want to be without.
Rating:
Summary: Forgotten Masterpiece
Review: This begins Mervyn Peake's epic trilogy. The trilogy can stand with anything in Western Literature (By the way is there really an Eastern Literature?). I could talk about the depth of the characterizations, the energy and effort invested in the prose, and solid (if somewhat tedious) ploting. Instead I'd like to mention despite everything that happens this is merely Act 1 of the play. It set's up the world in which Titus is born the events that will shape his soul even while he is an infant. It gives us something that no other book (play, movie, etc) does. An understanding of how events around us effect even the events we do not participate in.
Rating:
Summary: a reflection of a man's imagination..
Review: Titus Groan is a novel that's hard to classify. It's sort of a fairy tale for grown-ups. All the characters take place in this large kingdom/castle called Gormenghast, and the people are roughly European and Christian. The story involves the happenings of the royal family, its servants, and the new-born heir (named Titus Groan) to the throne. What makes this rather unappealing (at least on the surface) story work is the enormous descriptive power of Peake's writing. It's as if there is a direct connection from his mind to his pen. And the characters, and their dialogue, are most memorable. Everyone, even the not-so-nice people, are huggable. Many of the characters will remind the readers of a beloved dithering aunt or uncle who are, despite everything, near and dear. I strongly recommend Titus Groan as alternative reading. It might appeal to fans of Lord of the Rings and/or Watership Down, although bear in mind that everyone's imagination is different (so it's not useful to dwell on comparisons).
Rating:
Summary: Awesome
Review: Titus Groan and Gormenghast, the first two books in the Gormenghast trilogy, are easily the best books I have ever read, the best books I can even imagine reading. What's ironic is that Peake was by trade an illustrator; his writing almost seems to have been a kind of hobby, and yet he was a far better writer than he was an illustrator. What's great about this for the reader is that he is able to view a world through the eyes of an artist, for to read Peake is to experience the world in a deeper and more detailed way and expand one's own consciousness. Here are a few passages which describe the enmity between Swelter, the Royal chef, and Flay, the first servant of Lord Sepulchrave, one of the truly unforgettable personal conflicts in the trilogy: "Swelter, as soon as saw who it was, stopped dead, and across his face little billows of flesh ran swiftly here and there until, as though they had determined to adhere to the same impulse, they swept up into both oceans of soft cheek, leaving between them a vacuum, a gaping segment like a slice cut from a melon. It was horrible. It was as though nature had lost control. As though the smile, as a concept, as a manifestation of pleasure, had been a mistake, for here on the face of Swelter the idea had been abused. "A voice came out of the face: 'Well, well, well,' it said, 'may I be boiled to a frazzle if it isn't Mr. Flee. The one and only Flee.. Well, well, well. Here before me in the Cool Room. Dived through a keyhole, I do believe. Oh, my adorable lights and liver, if it isn't the Flee itself.'" . . . "It had been been Mr. Flay's practice, whenever possible, to ignore the chef as one ignores a cesspool by the side of the road, and although his pride was wounded by Swelter's mis-pronumciation of his name and reference to his thinness, Flay held his spiky passions in control, merely striding to the doorway after his examination of the other's bulk and spitting out of the bay window as though to clear his whole system of something noxious. Silent though he had learned by experience to be, each galling word did not fail to add to the growing core of hatred that burned beneath his ribs. "Swelter, as Flay spat, had leaned back in his traces as though in mock alarm, his head folded back on his shoulders, and with an expression of comic concentration, had gazed alternately at Mr Flay and then out of the window several times. 'Well, well, well', he said in his most provoking voice that seemed to seep out of dough -- 'well, well, well -- your accomplishments will never end. Baste me! Never. One lives and learns." . . . . . . "It moved across the room, the whiteness of the enveloping clothes tinctured by the lime-green lamp above. It sat beside the grindstone. It held in its hand what seemed, in proportion to its bulk, a small weapon, but which in reality was a two-handed cleaver. "Swelter's feet began to move the treadles of the grindstone, and it began to spin in its circles. ...Doubling himself over the grindstone he peered at the shivering edge of the blade, and every now and then lifted it to his ear as though to listen for a thin and singing note to take flight from the unspeakable sharpness of the steel... "Flay began to lose contact with the reality of what he saw and his brain to drift into a dream, when he found the chef was drawing himself upwards and traveling to that part of the wall where the chalk lines ended and where the arrow pointed to the Ninth staircase. Then he removed his shoes, and lifted his face for the first time so that Mr Flay could see the expression that seeped from it. His eyes were metallic and murderous, but the mouth hung open in a wide, fatuous smile. There followed what appeared to Flay an extraordinary dance, a grotesque ritual of the legs, and it was some time before he realized, as the cook advanced by slow, elaborate steps between the chalk lines, that he was practicing tip-toeing with absolute silence."
Rating:
Summary: Brilliant
Review: This is the only book I have ever read that forced me to adore the English language and wonder what has happened to such beautiful flights of the imagination. Peake's style is unique, dreamlike and incredibly romantic. Such strange and distinctive characters, each with their own oddity about them (for who, in this world, does not have an oddity of their own?)- Rottcodd with his wobbling head, Prunesquallor with his simile's and laughing sentences, Flay with his cracking knee joints - each leave their own individual mark upon the brain, and in different parts you begin to wonder what each character is up to, even if they are not present on the page you are reading(which is a unique quality in a novel). I first began to adore this book about mid-way through the first chapter, with the sentence "Rottcodd began to advance down the bright avenue, his feet giving rise at each step to little clouds of dust" staying vivid in my mind. It took a while for me to finish, for you have to be patient and take things slowly. Oftentimes you will find yourself re-reading paragraphs, or sentences, to grasp the description totally. I actually took my time finishing it, simply because I didn't want it to end! I would recommend this extraordinary novel to those with a creative and imaginative mind, those with patience, those who adore intense descriptions, and those who (like myself) love to read such beautiful English.
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: The subtle and patient reader will be rewarded
Review: I read the Gormenghast Trilogy for the first time when I was in high school, some eighteen years ago, and while many of the scenes and the overall mood remained in my memory, I completely missed most of the humor and beauty in the writing itself, as I discovered when recently rereading Titus Groan. The sonorous, skewed beauty of the language demands to be read slowly and savored as prose poetry -- I read only a few pages a day over several months. Take a passage like the following: "Suns and the changing of the seasonal moons; the leaves from trees that cannot keep their leaves, and the fish from olive waters have their voices! ... Stones have their voices and the quills of birds; the anger of the thorns, the wounded spirits, the antlers, ribs that curve, bread, tears and needles. Blunt boulders and the silence of cold marshes -- these have their voices -- the insurgent clouds, the cockerel and the worm. ... Voices that grind at night from lungs of granite. Lungs of blue air and the white lungs of rivers. All voices haunt all moments of all days; all voices fill the crannies of all regions." If you find this sort of thing boring, by all means skip this book. This has almost nothing to do with either Tolkien or his less skilled successors who churn out a 500-page volume every six months. I think it has more in common with a book like Moby Dick (which I have been advised not to read until I reach forty years of age), in that it demands that the reader relate the text to his own experience of life and literature. Many of the characters are grotesque parodies, but as with other masters of satire, Peake's exaggeration rings truer to life than a more "realistic" depiction would. The characters are neither good nor evil -- even Steerpike, though ambitious and unscrupulous, is not the evil villain of so many fantasy epics, but is in many ways a sympathetic character. Perhaps the main character is the castle Gormenghast itself, the concrete embodiment of the venerable yet often dysfunctional traditions under which the human characters labor. Mervyn Peake has here created a true fantasy -- a unique vision with its own consistency and texture, sometimes stifling and febrile, morbidly comic, but with glimpses of pathos and tranquility, sustained by an amazing elasticity of language and poetry.
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