Titus Groan by Mervyn Peake

I've been putting off reading this novel for about two years because I was daunted by its length and its reputation as a major fantasy. But as I'm slowly starting to explore fantasy again, I thought I would give it a try and it was way beyond my wildest expectations. The only other work of Peake's that I was familiar with were his amazing Alice in Wonderland illustrations, and his writing is very much like his art, only more twisted and vivid. This book reminded me of Charles Dickens in its style, because of the exaggerated and somewhat satirical style of descriptions, only since Peake isn't describing an endless succession of shopkeepers, tyrannical fathers-figures and fluttering virgins, it was vastly more interesting to read. His imagery is completely riveting, I couldn't put this book down and consumed it with utter delight. It's deliciously grotesque and at time terrifying, and it's one of those books that you open and get fully swallowed up by another universe. Even though it's a fantasy, very little that is magical actually happens, but I didn't realise that until I had finished the book, the style and language are so unique and unreal that it feels like most of the magic lies there. The action progresses in a very confusing way; things seem to happen by millimetres, then suddenly, everything happens at once. The tense the story is told in also changes all the time, Peake goes back from the point where he started to lead back up to it, jumps forward a week, a day, a year, then backtracks again. It's quite bewildering and fascinating. The characters are also amazing, but none of them are likeable. The most interesting one is the Machiavellian Steerpike, who is completely inappropriately played by the utterly delectable Jonathan Rhys Meyers in the BBC adaptation. He is supposed to be smarmy, oily, and bizarrely magnetic, and Meyers only has the latter of those qualities, so I will be quite interested to see what the BBC got up to with this, but I still (hooray!) have the two other Gormenghast novels ahead of me, which I will no doubt relish as much as this one. One of the reasons that I was apprehensive about reading it was that it's sometimes compared with The Lord of the Rings, and having read it, I can only say that I don't think they have anything in common except for length. The two series are completely unlike, and I have no idea why someone would think them similar.