Books like Titus Alone

Titus Alone has the charms and eccentricities, the verbal and visual beauties of its two formidable predecessors, but it is only about half as long as they are, with extremely short chapters, and it lacks their concentrated richness, their depth and perspective. Is it a radical departure, a sleeker, more streamlined work, its short chapters and overall length appropriate to its more modern setting? Or is it a diseased creation, the production of an artistically disappointed man who had suffered a nervous breakdown two years before and was already in the grip of Parkinson's disease? Or is it best viewed as a mere charcoal sketch, a study containing all the lines but lacking the coloring of the painting that--for whatever reason--was never completed? I think it is a bit of all three, but I favor the "charcoal sketch" view. The shape of the book--beginning (the modern urban world, Muzzlehatch, his menagerie, Juno), middle (the underground world of beggars and criminals), and conclusion (Titus' revival from illness by Cheetah followed by her betrayal)--seems altogether complete in outline. The theme of madness and Titus' fear of it--which some have seen as proof of Peake's artistic breakdown--is entirely appropriate, given that our hero has been formed and shaped by a world--Gormenghast--that other characters view as his own fantastic creation. No, I do not find the work deficient in construction or obsessive in its themes. Its principal defect is a lack of texture and balance. Because this book, unlike the others, is not crowded with a richness of incidental characters or overflowing with metaphors and vividly painted scenes, it lacks completeness and complexity, and its eccentric characters and bizarre scenes--no stranger than those of the two earlier books--seem odder and more isolated by comparison.All in all, an interesting but disappointing read. Still, essential for Peake fans.