Previous SFF Author: T. Aaron Payton
(1911-1968)
Learn more about Mervyn Peake at the official website.
I completed the first installment of Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast series with a sense of exhaustion. It is a colossal book, written with such dense language that reading through it is like gorging on words. It was the book equivalent of eating a very rich, very large chocolate cake. Behind all the intricacies and techniques of the language is an equally strange story, one that does not easily fit into any particular genre. In my local bookstore at least, it is shelved in the “fantasy”
Rebecca Fisher, Kate Lechler and Kat Hooper´s rating: 4 | Mervyn Peake | Audio | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |
Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast books are a difficult series to categorize in terms of genre, as they really are in a league of their own. Whenever the subject of Peake has arisen in conversation and I’ve been called upon to describe them to the uninitiated, my efforts are always rewarded with baffled looks. The books defy most attempts at classification; and although they’re usually put in the “fantasy” section of libraries and bookstores, the trilogy is bereft of the usual Tolkienesque fantasy trappings (mystical creatures,
Rebecca Fisher and Kat Hooper´s rating: 5 | Mervyn Peake | Audio | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |
Mervyn Peake’s magnum opus began in Titus Groan, and continued in Gormenghast, two brilliant (though door-stopping) books that explored the lives of those that exist in a self-contained, self-sufficient edifice known as Gormenghast: a labyrinthine world of towers, mansions, slums, and the corridors that connect them all. It is ruled by ancient and meaningless ritual, something that the titular character of Titus, Seventy-Seventh Earl of Gormenghast, has rejected. In the final passages of Gormenghast,”
Rebecca Fisher and Kat Hooper´s rating: 3.5 | Mervyn Peake | SFF Reviews | no comments |
The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer
I haven’t actually read every page of The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories, yet I’m giving it my highest recommendation. Edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer, Master and Mistress of Weird, The Weird is 1126 pages long and should really be considered a textbook of weird fiction. It contains 110 carefully chosen stories spanning more than 100 years of weird fiction.
Kat Hooper´s rating: 5 | Abraham Merritt, Caitlín R. Kiernan, China Mieville, Clark Ashton Smith, Clive Barker, Daniel Abraham, Elizabeth Hand, Fritz Leiber, George R.R. Martin, H.P. Lovecraft, Harlan Ellison, Haruki Murakami, Jeff VanderMeer, K.J. Bishop, Kelly Link, Laird Barron, Lisa Tuttle, Liz Williams, Lord Dunsany, Lucius Shepard, M. John Harrison, Margo Lanagan, Mervyn Peake, Michael Chabon, Neil Gaiman, Ray Bradbury, Robert Bloch, Stephen King, Tanith Lee | Short Fiction | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |
Previous SFF Author: T. Aaron Payton
I felt just the same. The prose and character work was excellent. The larger story was unsatisfying, especially compared to…
Hmmm. I think I'll pass.
COMMENT Was I hinting that? I wasn't aware of it. But now that you mention it.... 🤔
So it sounds like you're hinting Fox may have had three or so different incomplete stories that he stitched together,…
It's hardly a private conversation, Becky. You're welcome to add your 2 cents anytime!