Review: TITUS GROAN by Mervyn Peake

In many ways Peake was the anti-Tolkein. Where The Lord of the Rings tends to sprawl, Peake's Gormenghast Trilogy (he died a few paragraphs into the fourth and final book) is insular and claustrophobic. While Tolkein's work is full of beautiful people doing noble things, Peake's is full of ugly people doing questionable things. Tolkein built a monument to a better time that existed only in his own mind. Peake held up a baroque mirror to his own.

While both men had wordy styles but Peake turns his to humor in this book, making it more enjoyable to read. Given its overall bleak outlook, though, I don't recommend it.