Titus Alone by Mervyn Peake

In this final part of the trilogy, we follow Titus, now almost twenty, as he escapes from the Castle, flees its oppressive Ritual, and becomes lost in a sandstorm. Helped by the owner of a travelling zoo, Muzzlehatch, and his ex-lover Juno, Titus ends up stranded in a big, bustling city. No one there having heard of Gormenghast, the general consensus is that the boy is deranged, and with no papers, he's soon arrested for vagrancy. But there are a few people who believe in his story, or at least who are intrigued by it, and they try to help him. And now Titus, the deserter, the traitor, longs for his home, and looks for it all the time to prove, if only to himself, that Gormenghast is truly real.

Haughty teenager
thankless, resentful of help
Titus Groan, horndog.

I was already aware of the consensus that “Titus Alone” was widely considered a severe let-down after the first two Gormenghast books, so my expectations were low to begin with. However, despite the obvious shift from those earlier works, Peake's talent, his love of language, his creativity and his knack for unique characters still shine through, so that while a little tricky at first, I soon found myself enraptured in the story just as I had with the previous novels.

It is hard to leave Gormenghast behind, both for Titus as well as the reader, and at first the feeling of reading a Titus novel set outside the realm of Gormenghast is a disorienting one. Peake doesn't make it any easier by setting the rest of Titus' adventures not in our own world (Wouldn't that be something, Gormenghast like some Gothic Shangri-la, a mythical kingdom lost to time and cartography?) but in a strange dystopian realm with a mix of old and futuristic technologies. Here he meets up with people who have never heard of Gormenghast and believe Titus to be mad. Though Titus finds new friends in this strange land, he also finds sinister enemies with he must contend. Though arguably not the ideal end to the series, especially since the ending leaves things open ended, it was still good to follow Titus' adventures for a little bit longer.