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Titus Groan

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Titus Groan

By: Mervyn Peake
Narrated by: Simon Vance
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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."

©1967 , 1968 by Mervyn Peake (P)2000 Blackstone Audio, Inc. Epic Fantasy Historical
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Critic reviews

“[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.”

(C. S. Lewis)

“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.”

(Robertson Davies)

“[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.”

(Washington Post )

“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.”

(Amazon.com, editorial review)
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This book is fantastic. I loved the interesting characters and the macabre, gothic world in which they live. This book reminds me of Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke for its style of writing, elaborate characterisations and wicked humour. I will definitely be reading the remaining two books in the trilogy. Excellently read.

Excellent read

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I sympathise with the previous reviewer who gave up on this book, I almost did too. I bought it after a recommendation on Macbreak weekly, but it took most of the first part of the recording to capture me.

I think it's probably that after a fairly slow establishing of character and location, once the plot actually thickens, then it's compelling, and I came to enjoy the rather flowery descriptions, the strange interludes and the quirky weird world of the book. Even the names are brilliant: Flay and Swelter, Steerpike and Prunesqualor...

I think it's an excellent reading (though for some reason there's a repeated paragraph at the start of each audio chapter, at least in the second part of the download?) and the various voices of the characters are clearly recognisable by the time you reach the second half.

So, I will be downloading the next one and probably the third of the trilogy.

Slow to start with, then wonderful...

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I really enjoyed this audiobook, becoming totally engrossed in the meandering tale. Peake's writing is amazingly detailed and he cleverly weaves together the daily lives and stories of each of the castle's bizarre characters.

The book is professionally read with each character having their own distinctive voice throughout - no mean feat with this many characters and hours of reading!

A Wonderful Tale

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This classic work peopled with characters who are by turns bizarre, eccentric and manipulative has influenced a generation of macabre fantasy writing. The sprawling, brooding presence of Gormenghast Castle dominates the story. Against this dark background, the story of the grim, desperate struggles of a collection of grotesque characters is quietly compelling. No, this is not a conventional adventure story; this is a descent into a nightmare.

Enthralling

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I have never read this book and so its vastness, its pettiness, its eruptions of darkness came as a wonderful surprise to me. I found my self laughing out loud at some of the situations Peake constructed and gasping at the brutality of his darker moments. A wonderful book, wonderfully read.

Wonderful

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