Titus Alone by Mervyn Peake
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I waffled a little bit between three and four stars, but in the end Peake's use of language won over the rather odd plot departure in this third book.

I didn't mind that Titus was a stranger in a strange land or that he has apparently skipped far into the future where he's among moderns with airplanes or even stranger "seeing" devices or oddly strange ways of transportation upon one's side. All of that appeared to be a hop into the future beyond when this was written, too, so I'm going to call this SF as well as Fantasy. He seemed to be describing robots and AI! lol

I also liked the fact that Titus was nothing without his rituals or his history or his people. In giving up everything in the last book, he'd given up his own identity.

All good so far!

What kind of annoyed me was pretty much the continuity between the first two books and this one.

There was hardly any. This could have been a standalone quite easily, turning the modern world into a falling down the rabbit hole kind of fantasy for someone like Titus. Maybe he'd get back up and find a sense of himself beyond his place, and maybe not.

Unfortunately, I don't think he even go that much. The conclusion is quite dire. We are our past.

Do I really like this? No. Not particularly. Will I get over it because the rest of the text is pretty spectacular, minus some really atrocious sex scenes? Yeah, I probably will. :)



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