Benjamin L. Alpers
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Titus Groan
- Volume 1 of the Gormenghast Trilogy
- By: Mervyn Peake
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 17 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 906
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 629
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Story4 out of 5 stars 636
Enter the fantastical world of Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast Trilogy, one of the undisputed fantasy classics of all time. Novelist C.S. Lewis called Peake's books "actual additions to life; they give, like certain rare dreams, sensations we never had before, and enlarge our conception of the range of possible experience."
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5 out of 5 stars
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A great book ,no cliches, worth the effort
- By Zachariah on 08-17-09
- Titus Groan
- Volume 1 of the Gormenghast Trilogy
- By: Mervyn Peake
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
Count Me Among the Peake Fans
Reviewed: 09-11-07
As others have noted, Peake is often spoken of in the same breath as Tolkein. They are undoubtedly two of the greatest English fantasy novelists of the twentieth century. But rather than thinking of Peake as similar to Tolkein, it's perhaps best to think of him as the anti-Tolkein. Both Peake and Tolkein are great at what they do, but they're up to rather different things. If The Lord of the Rings is a basically celebratory series that focuses on plot, Peake's Gormenghast books (not, by design, a trilogy, but the first three books of a longer series cut short by Peake's untimely death) are deeply cynical and are about character and, above all, setting. While Tolkein's world is full of magic, monsters, and a variety of non-human races, Peake's is largely without all these things.
I'm a longtime Tolkein fan who is now also a Peake fan. Plenty of people appreciate the qualities of both authors. But others love one and detest the other. For example, the great British novelist Michael Moorcock is a proponent of Peake and a detractor of Tolkein.
At any rate, this book is a classic that deserves a listen by those prepared for something un-Middle Earth-y. And Robert Whitfield's reading is truly outstanding, as he effectively brings to life the many characters who populate Peake's book.
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53 people found this helpful
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Eifelheim
- By: Michael Flynn
- Narrated by: Anthony Heald
- Length: 17 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 601
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 283
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Story4 out of 5 stars 288
In 1349, one small town in Germany disappeared and was never resettled. Tom, a contemporary historian, and his theoretical-physicist girlfriend, Sharon, become interested. By all logic, the town should have survived, but it didn't. Why? What was special about Eifelheim that it utterly disappeared more than 600 years ago?
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5 out of 5 stars
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Poignant, Profound, Absorbing and deeply moving.
- By Andrew on 09-03-07
- Eifelheim
- By: Michael Flynn
- Narrated by: Anthony Heald
Aggravating
Reviewed: 08-21-07
It's not the reader's fault that one of the characters in EIFELHEIM has the annoying "trait" of peppering his speech with phrases from a random assortment of foreign languages.
However, if you're going to record an audio book in which one of the characters does this, for goodness sake get a reader who has some clue how to pronounce those languages!
There was much that was aggravating about this generally annoying book (its ridiculous portrayal of historians being one of them). But that endless series of mispronounced words was the icing on the cake!
EIFELHEIM is a relatively interesting idea, poorly executed.
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5 people found this helpful
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Aegypt
- By: John Crowley
- Narrated by: John Crowley
- Length: 15 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 156
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 88
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Story4 out of 5 stars 91
Is there more than one history of the world? This is the question Pierce Moffett is seeking to answer when, jilted and newly jobless, he gets off a bus by chance in the Faraway Hills and steps unawares into a story that has been awaiting him there. His search will bring him into contact with Rosie Rasmussen, another seeker marked by loss. And it will lead them both on a path toward the longed-for country of our oldest dreams and most unanswerable desires, toward a magnificent discovery.
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5 out of 5 stars
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A Rare Experience
- By Donald on 12-05-07
- Aegypt
- By: John Crowley
- Narrated by: John Crowley
Excellent Book, Well Read
Reviewed: 08-18-07
I cannot recommend this one highly enough. It has a somewhat opaque beginning, but stick with it! This is really not a very "difficult" book (or audiobook).
John Crowley's novels have often fallen through the crack between "serious" literary fiction and science fiction/fantasy. This novel (which has just been republished under the author's preferred title, "The Solitudes") is the first in a tetrology (still collectively called "Aegypt"). I can't say enough about it. It's a novel of ideas that contains interesting and believable characters. It is somewhat Pynchonesque (and has numerous Pynchon references for the Pynchonati) but is more humanistic in its orientation than Pynchon tends to be. And, despite what other reviewers have written, the author does an excellent job reading his own work. I only hope that Crowley provides us with audiobooks of the rest of the tetrology in the future!
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6 people found this helpful