Titus Finished

Praise be to Gormenghast for i have finally finished the Titus series by Mervyn Peak. It is strangly difficult for me now to look back and evaluate those three monoliths. It is suffice I beleive to give only a small review despite the time that they have taken from me. The story follows to being with life within the castle city of Gormenghast, home to the newly born Titus Groan, seventy seventh Earl. From then on it follows his life, the life of the castle, and the lives of those with whom he meets and interacts. The characters and well defined and have numerous dimensions, their consturction is antastic and some of the secondary characters really stand out as amazingly well developed. The settings are fantastically described and built in a way that forces manifestation in the readers mind to minute detail. The stroy in itself is long and full of twists and turns, it perfectly embodies the concepts of a boy growing into a man and offers a number of satirical perspectives of society and life in general. In many ways these are fantastic books, so why am I so hapy to be finished with them? The truth is that they are too much. This my sound silly but at times the description was too much, sometimes the focus on other characters where unnecessary, sometimes the story took very odd turns that made little to no sense, sometimes the satire wasn't spot on or just not amusing.

This series could be done in one book, In fact the third book barely seems to be connected with the first two and could be read seperately as a concept of insanity and would be an amazing stand alone book. For all it's good points this series gets lost in itself and a mire of words, metaphors and hyperbole.