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Gormenghast (Gormenghast, #2)

Mervyn Peake

Start date: September 1, 2018

Finish date: September 30, 2018

Discussion: Science Fiction and Fantasy

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Apr 18, 2013 midnightfaerie rated it it was amazing

Shelves: classics

An excellent second book in a horrifically creepy trilogy. As the second book in the trilogy, Gormenghast doesn't disappoint with even more eccentric characters and mounting tension with our evil villain, Steerpike. Gormenghast feels as if it's still a part of the first book, it flows so well. In fact, by the way it ended, I almost could have seen the story ending there, and so I'm somewhat perplexed as to how the third book is going to go. For me, the main character out of the myriad of charact An excellent second book in a horrifically creepy trilogy. As the second book in the trilogy, Gormenghast doesn't disappoint with even more eccentric characters and mounting tension with our evil villain, Steerpike. Gormenghast feels as if it's still a part of the first book, it flows so well. In fact, by the way it ended, I almost could have seen the story ending there, and so I'm somewhat perplexed as to how the third book is going to go. For me, the main character out of the myriad of characters to choose from, is not, in fact, a person, but the castle Gormenghast itself. So to see our young Titus Groan heading out at the end of the book, makes me wonder if we'll still have flashbacks of the happenings in our beloved keep. I truly hope so.

For those of you who haven't read Peake's trilogy, first, I highly encourage you to do so. And second, telling you how this second book ends in no way depletes from this awesome and ominous story. In this edition we see a host of new characters that add some comic relief, a weird sort of romance that doesn't necessarily sets your heart strings plucking, and the loss of some favorite characters. But that's all in a day's events here at Gormenghast. The romance in particular will make you smile, at least at first, and then those of you who, like me, who have been married for awhile, might see the wry irony that comes from years of having to get along with the same person. In fact, it's almost super-human-like to see how fast the couple goes from gooey-eyed love to bickering old couple. But that's only a smart part of the events in this book. One of my favorite parts is the flood.

When I was a kid, I loved to swim and often wondered what it would be like to have each room in the house filled with water so that I could swim from one room to another. In essence, this is what happens in the castle. While the adults deal with the deaths, the sickness, and salvaging what items they can, the kids are busy diving from the turrets into the glassy ponds that used to be rooms and courtyards. Of course, I'm completed conflicted in this revelry. Part of me thinks how much fun it would be to be a kid again and be jumping into a lake from my bedroom window, and then the other half of me is horrified and can't help but think, those are stone walls under that water! What's to keep them from smashing their heads in on those walls when they dive? Either way, the imagery is explicit and entertaining and I never tire of reading Peake's style of writing.

Probably there are many themes brought up in other reviews: religion or lack thereof, tradition, ritual, etc. And yes, they're there, however, for my being a Peake virgin, I would like to just continue to bask in the loveliness of the dissertation. The prose that seems to flow so effortlessly from Peake's pen is beguiling and enchanting, and I just want to take a bath in these words. I want to submerge myself in the lush detail of this literature and think of Fuchsia-esque like ways to commit suicide for I am so not worthy to even breathe on the book cover of this talented writer. And yes, this is over-the-top dramatic, but I like to think I've been Fuchsia-inspired and I will leave these cheesy sentences as is.

Without a doubt, this is a work of classical literature. The form, the style of writing, its uniqueness, the underlying themes of the human condition and its undefinable genre make it so. But more than anything, its huge following and the magical world that Peake creates shows us his genius. I hear the last book is very different from the first two, and I pray it isn't so.

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