Read the first two books of Gormenghast but not planning on reading the third because there just isn't enough of a sense of an injustice that needs to be righted and/or some vague highly positive thing that looms off in the distance. Possibly in other words it could be said that Titus isn't enough of a hero. There's nothing it's clear he's going to fix. Maybe that's what he's supposed to be, actually. But it hasn't been made sufficiently clear for me...

Perhaps it could be said that the book is too "adult" for me. The right and wrong is too ambigious. The good guys and bad guys aren't quite clear enough for me...

At first I thought Gormenghast's mindless absurd adherence to tradition was part of an extreme dystopia and that Steerpike was hopefully going to do something about it. Turns out he just wanted to get to the top of such a society. So he's a "bad" guy. Although yet his upbringing is such that one could sympathize with him. So he wasn't an entirely 2D bad guy, which is good. Yet then again, he was quite close to 2D.

So then is Titus going to do something about this mindless adherence to tradition/ritual?

He's certainly not a fan of it. Perhaps he might. Yet, as he gets older, it seems more and more that this ritual is their form of religion. At the same time that I can't hardly see anything particularly harmful really in their traditions/rituals. Well OK here and there, yes. But nothing particularly glaring. It's more like does Titus want to help support their form of religion or not? And there isn't quite such a clear right or wrong answer to this question. So, again, no clear injustice that needs to be righted. And no sense at all of some vague, mysterious, wonderful thing looming off in the distance, like bringing dragons back into the world or at the very least some great happiness for the protagonist.

And finally, Peake has killed off almost everyone else, and has Titus leaving this massive castle, somewhat mysterious (in a vague wonderful way) castle.

So despite Peake's verbal wonders, and for that matter occasional beautiful insights, I find myself not so interested in continuing.

Is a clear sense of right and wrong childish? Or is it that assimilating into the adult world means finding a way to convince yourself that a lot of things that clearly are wrong actually aren't? Most childrens initial reaction to eating meat, is that this is something that is wrong. They then learn to believe it's perfectly fine. This then occurs over and over again as they slowly learn to adapt to, to believe in, all the social norms of our post-industrial society. And generally to the extent they do so successfully, they will be happy in their life.