A Family that Groans Together: “Titus Groan” Review

Strange, somber, and unconventional, Peake’s first novel Titus Groan  delights the senses with prose that challenges even the most cerebral reader and so begins the tragic chronicle of the Groans and Castle Gormenghast.

This gothic fantasy gets off to a slow and inauspicious start, detailing a ceremony of the bright carvers, inhabitants that live in hovels outside the castle and carve statues to honor Lord Sepulchrave the 76th Earl of Groan. Taking place in the shadow of Gormenghast, the whole scene offers an excellent glimpse into the Castle’s immensity and immutability. Even if the plot meanders, the verve of Peake’s descriptions are a pleasure.

Neil Gaiman to Adapt New Gormenghast?

The gothic beauty of Mervyn Peake’s Castle Groan, one of the most vivid and detailed settings in the fantasy genre, may finally make it to the silver screen, with none other than fantasy heavyweight Neil Gaiman at the helm.

Gaiman made the announcement on his Twitter feed.

The Gormenghast Trilogy has long been a favorite of many authors, including C.S. Lewis, Michael Moorcock, and Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange). Titus Groan, the first novel in the series, was published in 1950, the same year as Lewis’ The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, and four years before The Lord of the Rings.

A Delightful Mix of Science Fiction and Magical Realism: The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi

The Windup Girl is a darkly pleasing mix of science fiction and magical realism, replete with gene-hacked food, color-molting Cheshire cats, and stalking ancestral ghosts.

In the 22nd century, megacorporations known as “calorie companies” have contaminated the world’s natural food supply and successfully monopolized global food production by providing genetically modified, disease-resistant, and sterile foodstuffs. Fossil fuels have failed, sea levels have risen and the world is on the brink of environmental collapse.

Due to a mysterious generipper, a cache of pristine heirloom seeds, and draconian security measures regarding immigration and the import of goods, Thailand has remained independent, which has made it a target for infiltration by corporate calorie agents. But Thailand is also fighting a war within, as the Trade and Environment Ministries bribe, backstab and struggle for control of the kingdom. Tumultuous and volatile, this intricately detailed future Thailand is as fetid and corrupt as it is exuberant.

Devil-grass, Revolvers, and the Dark Tower: “The Gunslinger” by Stephen King: Review

A mix of fantasy and western motifs, The Gunslinger is set in Mid-World, a future dystopia which vaguely resembles the Old American West, except that technology has largely been forgotten. A rusted gas pump bearing the name Amoco is worshipped as a totem of a thunder-god. Highways and train tracks lay in disuse, obscured by devil-grass, sand, and the ruin of time. Guns are rare weapons.

The story begins with the last gunslinger Roland of Gilead following the Man in Black into the Mohaine Desert. It is just the first of many lush passages which make this book such an enjoyable read.

Stare Down the Barrel: “The Gunslinger” by Stephen King: Preview

The Gunslinger is a remarkable story for many reasons. Not only is it one of King’s earliest works, begun in 1970 when he was a 19 year-old sophomore at University of Maine, it is one of only two that he would revise later in his career — The Stand is the other.

Originally serialized as five short stories in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction from 1978 to 1981, The Gunslinger was finally published as a book in 1982, the first of seven in the Dark Tower cycle. Twenty-one years later, King substantially revised it, adding about 35 pages, an introduction and foreword.

Feeling that it suffered from an overuse of adverbs and was a difficult start for new readers, King worked to improve the storytelling and resolve continuity errors introduced in later books. “The Gunslinger had been written by a very young man,” King remarks in the foreword, “and had all the problems of a very young man’s book.” You can find a list of the revisions here.

On the Reading Project, Shape of the Blog

My love for fantasy began when I was young, with Brian Jacques’ Redwall series or maybe Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows. The most influential books, however, were The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien. These adventure tales opened for me a secret world and a lifelong passion for reading. They also led me to science fiction, because back then I didn’t know there was any difference.

I’ve branched out since, but not nearly as much as I would have liked. This is where the reading project began — from a desire to read great science fiction and fantasy, and find a community of like-minded readers. To compose my list, I consulted various top 100 lists: The Guardian’s Best SFF, NPR: Top 100 Science Fiction and Fantasy Books, and Locus Best SF Novels of All-Time served as good starting points. Admittedly, I cherry-picked from them according to my personal tastes, which is why Le Guin, Gaiman, and Miéville make multiple appearances and there are maybe too few space operas.

Remember: I’m counting on you, dear readers and commenters, to let me know your favorite books and point out ones that I’ve overlooked.

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At this point, it may be helpful to elaborate on the kinds of posts I’ll be writing for each book:

Preview: background information, the opening lines of the book, and some quick facts about it and the author to let you know what I’ll be reading next.

Live updates: moving passages or scenes that grab me and say “write about me now! Don’t wait for the review!” How many of these I post will depend on the length of the book (and the quality, I suppose). Finishing the book is obviously important, but I won’t deny myself a writing prompt.

Spoiler-free Review: Now, each person’s definition of spoiler will vary, but I will do my best in this regard. If my blog achieves one thing, I hope it will help people discover some fantastic science fiction and fantasy, without depriving them the rush of a first-read.

Feature Posts: Here be spoilers; reader beware. I may want to discuss themes and content in more depth, most likely accompanied by, when applicable, the insight of a secondary source. Recently, science fiction and fantasy has increasingly been the topic of critical discussion and I would like to contribute, if I have something smart to say (which, of course, remains to be seen).

Stay tuned for what I hope will be an epic reading odyssey!