More of wot I have read…

Gormenghast trilogy by Mervyn Peake 1911-1968
Titus Groan 1946
Gormenghast 1950
Titus alone 1959 – reworked after his death

This was a very difficult series of books and ultimately took me several months to stubbornly plough my way through. The exciting but complicated writing of Peake had its rewards and challenges and the increasingly surreal imagery proved difficult to overcome. I found the first book the best and the most exciting and beautifully imagined, the second became more complicated and the last book was just to way out there to really be enjoyed.

I remembered the first book being made into a TV series some time ago that thinking back on it recreated much of the gothic grandeur pretty much as I imagined whenI read it.


Moon by James Herbert

Not quite the same sort of book as what I have just been reading previously (Gormenghast) and the technology changes from when it was written did make it feel dated. But it did have some good ideas; however I can’t find enough in it to really recommend it unless you have nothing else to read.

‘He had fled from the terrors of his past, finding refuge in the quietness of the island. And for a time he lived in peace. Until the ‘sightings’ began, visions of horror seeping into his mind like poisonous tendrils, violent acts that were hideously macabre, the thoughts becoming intense.

He witnessed the grotesque acts of another, a thing that glorified in murder and mutilation, a monster that soon became aware of the observer within its own mind, and relished the contact. A creature that eventually would come to the island to seek him out…’