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As the novel opens, Titus, heir to Lord Sepulchrave, has just been born. He stands to inherit the miles of rambling stone and mortar that form Gormenghast Castle. Meanwhile, far away and in the kitchen, a servant named Steerpike escapes his drudgework and begins an auspicious ascent to power. Inside of Gormenghast, all events are predetermined by complex rituals, the origins of which are lost in time. The castle is peopled by dark characters in half-lit corridors. Dreamlike and macabre, Peake's extraordinary novel is one of the most astonishing and fantastic works in modern fiction.… (más)
50 pages of very little content, the problem is all there. You cannot write a book which is only an introduction. Also the setting is boring. The writing is good. ( )
As other reviewers note, the descriptions of Gormenghast and its hidebound rituals are amazing. But the cartoonish voice of the characters didn't really work for me and made the book a bit of a slog to finish. ( )
I liked this book but I will admit it is not going to be for everyone. It moves at a languid pace. The words are as important as any story that is going on. For me it was a lot like reading an over the top fantasy novel that Dickens might have written. Only Dickens made his writing more accessible.
I can see the roots of a lot of writers I really like in this book though (China Mieville for instance). I am glad I finally read it and will work my way through the other books but this is going to be a series I will not read straight through. ( )
Información procedente del conocimiento común inglés.Edita para encontrar en tu idioma.
Dost thou love picking meat? Or would'st thou see A man in the clouds, and have him speak to thee? BUNYAN
Dedicatoria
Primeras palabras
Información procedente del conocimiento común inglés.Edita para encontrar en tu idioma.
Gormenghast, that is, the main massing of the original stone, taken by itself would have displayed a certain ponderous quality were it possible to have ignored the circumfusion of those mean dwellings that swarmed like an epidemic around its outer walls.
Citas
Información procedente del conocimiento común inglés.Edita para encontrar en tu idioma.
Swelter's eyes meet those of his enemy, and never was there held between four globes of gristle so sinister a hell of hatred. Had the flesh, the fibres, and the bones of the chef and those of Mr. Flay been conjured away and away down that dark corridor, leaving only their four eyes suspended in mid-air outside the Earl's door, then, surely, they must have reddened to the hue of Mars, reddened and smouldered, and at last broken into flame, so intense was their hatred - broken into flame and and circled about one another in ever-narrowing gyres and in swifter and yet swifter flight until, merged into one sizzling globe of ire they must have surely fled, the four in one, leaving a trail of blood behind them in the cold grey air of the corridor, until, screaming as they fly beneath innumerable arches and down endless passageways of Gormenghast, they found their eyeless bodies once again, and re-entrenched themselves in startled sockets.
It was not often that Flay approved of happiness in others. He saw in happiness the seeds of independence, and in independence the seeds of revolt.
Steerpike had an unusual gift. It was to understand a subject without appreciating it. He was almost entirely cerebral in his approach. But this could not easily be perceived; so shrewdly, so surely he seemed to enter into the heart of whatever he wished, in his words or his deeds, to mimic.
The library appeared to spread outwards from him as from a core. His dejection infected the air about him and diffused its illness upon every side. All thing in the long room absorbed his melancholia. The shadowing galleries brooded with slow anguish; the books receding into the deep corners, tier upon tier, seemed each a separate tragic note in a monumental fugue of volumes.
Últimas palabras
Información procedente del conocimiento común inglés.Edita para encontrar en tu idioma.
And there shall be a flame-green daybreak soon. And love itself will cry for insurrection! For tomorrow is also a day -- and Titus has entered his stronghold.
As the novel opens, Titus, heir to Lord Sepulchrave, has just been born. He stands to inherit the miles of rambling stone and mortar that form Gormenghast Castle. Meanwhile, far away and in the kitchen, a servant named Steerpike escapes his drudgework and begins an auspicious ascent to power. Inside of Gormenghast, all events are predetermined by complex rituals, the origins of which are lost in time. The castle is peopled by dark characters in half-lit corridors. Dreamlike and macabre, Peake's extraordinary novel is one of the most astonishing and fantastic works in modern fiction.
Also the setting is boring.
The writing is good. ( )