ranjit@bookwyrm.social finished reading Titus Alone by Mervyn Peake
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 …
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In this final part of the trilogy, we follow Titus, now almost twenty, as he escapes from the Castle, flees …
When I started reading, I thought this book was poorly written, but pretty soon I got into its rhythm and really enjoyed it. It's sort of a cozy mystery set in a sort of renaissance fair world with magic and adventurers, but with the excitement turned waaaay down. Someone gets ill, something gets stolen, a marriage proposal is turned down, a donkey gets loose. And yet somehow I cared about it all.
Meanwhile, in the background, there's all these weird little details scattered around that made me think that this fantasy world is really a sort of long-post-apocalyptic utopia-in-progress, a designed culture intended to become Anarres in a few dozen more generations. Everyone is obsessed with prices and exchange rates and money but their money itself is a kind of handicraft, and nobody seems to have more money than they need for a few little luxuries, and it seems like …
When I started reading, I thought this book was poorly written, but pretty soon I got into its rhythm and really enjoyed it. It's sort of a cozy mystery set in a sort of renaissance fair world with magic and adventurers, but with the excitement turned waaaay down. Someone gets ill, something gets stolen, a marriage proposal is turned down, a donkey gets loose. And yet somehow I cared about it all.
Meanwhile, in the background, there's all these weird little details scattered around that made me think that this fantasy world is really a sort of long-post-apocalyptic utopia-in-progress, a designed culture intended to become Anarres in a few dozen more generations. Everyone is obsessed with prices and exchange rates and money but their money itself is a kind of handicraft, and nobody seems to have more money than they need for a few little luxuries, and it seems like kind of the last gasp of a simplified market society before they go completely post-scarcity. Violence, ambition, even strong emotions seem to be culturally discouraged. All this was pretty well shown, not told, and then in the afterword the author pretty much confirmed all the weird impressions I got, which means she did a pretty good job of conveying it.
A lot of reviewers complained reasonably that the worldbuilding is pretty unbelievable at times, but I was having too much fun to notice.
I loved the big gimmick underlying the whole book: the protagonist has the talents and affinities to be the most powerful and destructive necromancer of her generation - there’s even prophecies about her! - but she was raised by pacifist hippies and works incredibly hard not to accidentally incinerate or mind-control her classmates, building power not by sacrificing animals but through push-ups and crochet.