Gormenghast (novel) the ivy against the castle walls, and full of rage and hatred against Steerpike he pursues and kills him himself. Despite being hailed as a hero, Titus is intent on leaving Gormenghast to explore a wider world, and the novel ends with him dramatically riding away to seek his fortune in the unknown lands outside. The Poet: Known only by his professional name, the Poet holds a relatively important function of ritual in the castle. He is described as having a wedge-shaped head and a voice "as strange and deep as a lugubrious ocean". After Barquentine's death and Steerpike's unmasking
Gloriana (novel) doubt," from other spheres, perhaps separated by layers of ether. Gloriana's Thane of Hermiston has travelled to some of them, and Albion has been visited from other spheres by such as Cagliostro and Adolphus Hiddler, an Austrian who claimed to have conquered his own world. The novel's atmosphere owes something to English writer Mervyn Peake's "Gormenghast" novels, published in the 1940s and 1950s, and Moorcock dedicated "Gloriana" to the memory of Peake, one of his literary heroes. Similar to the castle-city of Gormenghast, Gloriana's palace is riddled with abandoned chambers, apartments, hallways, passages, balconies, stairways, and caverns—"the walls"—within which live