Reddit mentions of The Gormenghast Novels (Titus Groan / Gormenghast / Titus Alone)

i mean, i say give the books another shot because i can't imagine enjoying the movies but not the books. but to each their own. if you don't want to go down that road, what do you mean things that might interest you? do you mean in the harry potter universe? if so, the other stuff is fun but the original seven are her magnum opus IMO and to get my fix, i had to go outside the Harry Potter universe.

some books that I just inhaled and read in one sitting will sound super corny, but...

• The Sookie Stackhouse novels. Wow. I am embarrassed at how fast I read these books. Edward Cullen can screw off. Eric is way hotter.
  
• the Da Vinci Code. Not the best writing. not the most factual history. don't care I blasted through that book.
  
• Ready Player One
  
  If you just want some good fantasy that isn't just Lord of the Rings rip offs, these are the ones I like.
  
  
• Gormenghast
  
• King Killer Chronicles
  
• Wheel of Time
  
• Game of Thrones
  
• The Blade Itself
  
• The Crystal Cave

Hello! Been reading Smith for ages.

anotherface provided a superb list of authors. I'll add two writers to it, one contemporary, one not -- both dead.

Brian MacNaughton's Throne of Bones. One of the most darkly inventive works of fantasy in recent times. Highly recommended for an aficionado of Smith's work.

And, one of the works in my mind, to equal Smith's mastery of language: The Gormenghast Trilogy of Mervyn Peake. For me, these books are the pinnacle. Desert island bound, Peake's work would be the one book I'd definitely take.

Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast books: Titus Groan, Gormenghast, and Titus Alone for being unexpectedly dystopian in a book that's really about castles, and a king, and a kitchen boy, and stuff. So good.

Gormenghast Trilogy.

Read it all the way to the end of the 3rd book and you, too, will likely toss the book across the room in anger at the cheap writing trick that ends the long, long slog you had to get there.

Narnia If you haven't ready it, the Gormenghast trilogy (though it's a little dark), the Rick Riordan Percy Jackson and the Olympians series.


You might also try Homer's Odyssey if you can find a good translation. It's a great book.

Damn, i loooooved the bartimaeus books.

Sorry about the amazon links. I don't mean to sound like a shill.

Try the Gormenghast trilogy. No dragons or wizards, but very engrossing.

This isn't really self promotion, per-se, because I haven't yet written anything worth promoting, but I would like to direct the good people of /r/writing towards this book which contains perhaps the most glorious descriptive passages ever known to man.

You've pretty much just described the first two books of Gormenghast by Mervyn Peake. It has loads and loads of characters, and non-evil Titus is the technical over-all protagonist of the series as a whole but the main focus of the first two books is the rise of Steerpike- one of the most fantastically ruthless characters in literature, who, none-the-less, has a legitimate point about the system he's trying to bring down.

I've read parts of it but never owned a physical copy. You can read it for free here on Project Gutenberg.

Editing to say that you can get the whole Gormenghast collection in a single volume for <$20: http://www.amazon.com/Gormenghast-Novels-Titus-Groan-Alone/dp/0879516283