This could have been even better than Titus Groan, because when it comes to epic life--the return and grim fall of Flay, the Golem of Gormenghast; Titus's great allegorical sexual encounter with the Thing in the cave; (heart pounding, full of hate, breathing in water), Steerpike's last stand. I will not forget these characters.

But Peake doesn't seem to know if he wants allegory, high satire, or low parody, and all to often settles for the last in a grimy ramshackle way that the "Fantasy of Manners" label I see applied to this book does only so much to excuse. I'll give fantasy of manners to Fuchsia, and maybe (maybe) Irma Prunesquallor and Bellgrove, although Peake all too often seems to be looking down his nose Britishly at their marriage with sneery vignettes, rather than the good-humoured touch they demand. But the schoolmasters and pupils, the way they intrude like broken-record trash knockoffs of the sort of just-over-the-top public-school parody you might see in e.g. Waugh, the way you're constantly invited to take this book seriously and then get your nose pushed into turgid slapstick comedy, is demoralizing.

And it saps the book's might to an extent. Too much of the time you feel like they could all be called Prunesquallor. Peake should have decided whether he wanted a Jungian fable or credit for preemptively writing Pink Floyd's The Wall, and then stuck with it.

And Titus is a cipher, grimmer than Prince Hal or Hot Rod/Rodimus Prime and that's all. He has another chance to shine, though, in book 3, and by the end of this one I was starting to care a little. But I think Peake wants me to think "Can he be free?", when I really just think "Will he turn out to be damaged goods?" ( )

if only to meet the professors and the prunesquallors. truly a great work of imaginative fiction. some with a harry patter tummy ache might find medicine here. nothing against hp, of course. ( )

This is a unique coming of age story, with Peake's Dickenslike characters and the brooding castle the overshadows everything. The plot itself unfolds slowly, both in pages and in years, but this was not a detriment as the reader knows what the expect in the second novel of the trilogy. In many ways it is even more bizarre than the first book, but that is part of the appeal. ( )

Reviewed Feb 2005

In this second novel by Peake the author becomes more detailed and numbers his chapters instead of titling as he did in his last novel. The story closely follows the movie it end with the Death of Steerpike and Titus leaving on horseback to seek his destiny. Oddly there is another novel "Titus Alone" I am curious to see what happens to him, but am almost afraid to read it as it probably deals with him just riding around - living off the land and finally coming back home ready to rule. I found the death of Fucia unnecessary and anticlimactic. As well as the character, "the Thing" what was that all about. Surly Titus could have learned about freedom some other way. As far as the story being believable it really reached to imagine that the valley and the castle could be flooded so quickly with little rain. The countess states to Titus that there is nowhere but Gormenghast, there must be other countries. Why is there no trade. where does the countess come from, what is her history? Were is Titus and Fucia supposed to find mates? He details the surroundings but never answers the basic questions.

6-2005 ( )

It's taken me a long time to get through this, the second volume of Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast trilogy. It's not because this is a particularly dull book - though the prose style that he uses often means that the plot is slow to unravel, and the writing is often dense and compacted - but because I made myself read it in chunks of fifty pages at a time so that I could savour it for longer.

I'm always at a loss as to how exactly he did it, but even with a style as Gothic as his was, Peake alway...more It's taken me a long time to get through this, the second volume of Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast trilogy. It's not because this is a particularly dull book - though the prose style that he uses often means that the plot is slow to unravel, and the writing is often dense and compacted - but because I made myself read it in chunks of fifty pages at a time so that I could savour it for longer.

I'm always at a loss as to how exactly he did it, but even with a style as Gothic as his was, Peake always managed to stay above the level of writing purple prose. Instead, he created a kind of writing that is beautiful and morbid and dark and funny and enjoyable and and extravagant and fantastic all at once.

The characters that he sketches are gorgeous things of murk and shadows and madness - Lady Gertrude, Titus, Fuschia, and above all, Steerpike - who inhabit a world which is seemingly so different from our own, but which always seems to share our modern preoccupations with delineations and values and the past, and always, always, the desire for freedom. It's often blackly funny in its observations on human behaviour, and wryly cynical to boot. Think of Terry Pratchett, and then skew the Discworld books to a place darker and weirder than anything Pterry ever conceived, and that is where the Gormenghast books dwell.

This is a large book in and of itself - over 500 pages in my paperback edition - and the trilogy itself sprawls to encompass many hundreds of pages more. But it's still a hugely rewarding work to read, and I can't recommend it highly enough.

There should be no rich, no poor, no strong, no weak,' said Steerpike, methodically pulling the legs off the stag beetle, one by one as he spoke. 'Equality is the great thing, equality is everything.' ( )

One of the best books ever written! ( )

I'm so glad I discovered the Gormenghast series. Mervyn Peake is the most beautifully descriptive writer I've ever read. Gormenghast castle is as much of a character as the people in this novel. Gormenghast is the second novel in the Gormenghast trilogy, and it tells of the last days of the ancient Gormenghast line, as Titus, the 77th Earl of Gormenghast rebels against the life he is expected to lead, and Steerpike, the former kitchen boy, plots to take over all. This is a series I will definitely reread. ( )

Having already read 'Titus Groan', I had a better idea what to expect from the second book in the series (which is a trilogy only because Peake became very ill during the writing of 'Titus Alone', published in 1959, and produced very little between its publication and his death in 1968). Peake's writing is quite unlike anything else I've ever read - Peake takes you immediately into his dark, brooding world with his unique descriptive style and dense writing. Gormenghast Castle is a huge physical presence, louring over everything and everyone in the book.

This book opens when Titus Groan, the Earl of Gormenghast, is seven years old. By now, Gormenghast Castle and its hidebound, pointless rituals is both a physical and emotional prison for Titus. Meanwhile, Steerpike continues his stealthy, sinister rise from kitchen boy with ideas above his station, to the powerful position of assistant to Barquentine, curator of traditional observance. His avowed intention is ultimately to take over the castle and destroy the Groan dynasty.

However, the dark brooding atmosphere is more than leavened by the sub-plot concerning the Professors who teach at Titus' boarding school, and Irma Prunesquallor's search for a husband among these dusty pedagogues.

This seems to me a richer book than its predecessor, as Titus grows to maturity. Both Steerpike and Titus are rebels - but in all other ways they are opposites. It is inevitable that one of them must be destroyed. The cataclysmic flood that features towards the end of the book serves as a fitting backdrop to their final conflict. [September 2006]

It doesn't have some of the big elements that I really enjoy in stories. There was really only one fantastic element in the book and though it was a bit of a tragedy it wasn't tragic enough to pull at my heartstrings.

I definitely enjoyed it more than the first book but I may have read the first book too slowly. The writing is amazing. The style is unique. The characters are extremely colorful and ALL very memorable.

I can see why something like this never goes out of print. It truly is a classic in a niche of its own. ( )

Peake's Gormenghast series should be on the reading list of every serious fantasy fan. His descriptive writing is superb, and the combination of quirky, likable, and yet absurdly grotesque characters and gothic setting are truly unique.

This book continues the adventures of the survivors from the cast of characters introduced in Titus Groan. It builds on the strengths of Book I, within the framework of a more conventional plot (with Titus as the protagonist and a much less ambiguous Steerpike as the villain). An assortment of professors are introduced as new characters to provide comic relief and an opportunity to observe Titus' growth and development.

I found it a bit of a slow read, (which is not to deny that there are several amazingly compelling scenes, ranging from the magical pageantry of Titus' birthday masque to the pulse-pounding pursuit of Steerpike through the labyrinthine passages of the castle). But it's a book where the reader's persistence is rewarded in a big way.

The Prunesquallors' soiree and subsequent love scene in the garden provided one of the funniest interludes I can remember reading in any book, ever. ( )

Book Review (spanish) ( )

Really enjoyed the first book, not so much the others because I didn't relate as much to the characters. Also, the mad owl earl was totally awesome. ( )

Even more bizarre than Titus Groan. It flows along, seeming to make sense in its own odd way and suddenly reverses itself. Everything changes in an abrupt sentence, leaving me to re-read the relevant part over and over to assure myself that it actually said what it seemed to. Very rich. Full of haunting imagery. ( )

This second volume it the Gormenghast Trilogy is as fine as the first, and together they make a good pair, a classic pair, a work of perfection. Consider the third volume a sequel, and the main tale as covered in "Titus Groan" and "Gormenghast." Oddly, the title of the first would have better covered the tale of the second, since this, "Gormenghast," is about the education of Titus Groan, heir to Gormenghast castle.

A powerful, and truly odd and inventive book. ( )

The second volume of the celebrated Gormenghast trilogy is, like the first, a masterwork of utter and amazing genius. Caricature of the Dickensian variety here has fermented in ancient casks, and transcended Gothic to a degree of exquisite weirdness rarely paralleled.

There is little or no magic in the book. There is just imagination, and an unanchored history shorn of its chains in the real world, and crashed upon the mountains of poetry.

I refer to an image in E. M. Forster's "Aspects of the Novel"; sorry.

A great work. There's no point to try to do justice to it in synopsis or characertization. Really, all I can do is recommend. ( )