Gormenghast - Mervyn Peake

Written by Mervyn Peake
Read by Richard Matthews / Simon Vance
Format: MP3
Unabridged

- Gormenghast (Gormenghast Trilogy, Vol 2) (Audiobook) -
Mervyn Peake (Author)
Whitefield (Narrator)

The second volume in the GORMENGHAST trilogy. Titus Groan, now aged seven, has come to understand that the kingdom he has inherited has an attendant evil which has begun to spread. Meanwhile, Steerpike is making inroads into the heart of the castle, leaving imprisonment, manipulation and murder in his wake.
It’s not really possible to review Gormenghast out of context with the other two books that sandwich it: Titus Groan leads you into the world of Gormenghast and Titus Alone makes you wonder how Gormenghast, the place, exists.
This second volume continues to follow the adventures of the murderously ambitious Steerpike, the maturity and self-awareness of Titus Groan, with some colorful side-trips into a courtship, the revelation of a creature completely antithetical to all that Gormanghast stands for, and a natural disaster that heightens the intensity of the conclusion.
I would heartily recommend starting with Titus Groan (it seems the only available edition has all three volumes in one), and working through them in sequence. But make sure you avoid all the scholarly apparatus that follows Titus Alone until you’ve finished all three: there are a few spoilers there.
As for the comparisons to Tolkein, I’m afraid I don’t see it: they as different as can be. This is not a hero’s quest and where it does come down to good versus evil, it’s more to do with survival: the world of Gormenghast is a world of murk and shadows, with no clear delineations or values. Titus Groan’s self-awareness and the choices he makes are what drive the story. In The Lord of the Rings, there’s a sense of destiny to the decisions and actions: Gormenghast is much more personal, with Steerpike’s ambition, Sepulchrave’s sense of duty, Flay’s vigilance, Titus’s maturity all helping to propel the action.

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Thanks to anonamouse, this is a reshare

This is the sequel to https://audiobookbay.lu/abss/gormenghast-bk-1-titus-groan-mervyn-peake/

Simon Vance is also called Richard Matthews