Vintage
Titus, heir to Lord
Sepulchrave, has just been born, he stands to inherit the miles of
rambling stone and mortar that stand for Gormenghast Castle. There are
tears and strange laughter; fierce births and deaths beneath umbrageous
ceilings; dreams and violence and disenchantment contained within a
labyrinth of stone.
Starts with the birth
and ends with the first birthday celebrations of the heir to the grand,
tradition-bound castle of Gormenghast. A grand miasma of doom and
foreboding weaves over the sterile rituals of the castle. Villainous
Steerpike seeks to exploit the gaps between the formal rituals and the
emotional needs of the ruling family for his own profit.
This book / series has been on my must read list pretty much since I learned of it's existenceand I knew that one day I'd get the urge to read it and that day finally arrived. Was it worth the wait? Yes, pretty much but I wasn't as blown away as I'd hoped to be.
Titus Groan is the freshly born heir to the House of Groan, the ruling family of the monolithic castle of Gormenghast and surrounding country. Gormenghast is a place of ritual where every action is governed by centuries of ritual and heritage that permeates through it's labyrinthine corridors and highly stratified hierachy. Into this system comes the self serving, psychopathic figure of Steerpike, a kitchen boy with his eye on something more for himself, something better.
It's a richly imagined and intrically plotted novel of Machiavellian intrigue going head to head with the immovable force of entrenched tradition. It is though very slow, so slow in fact that I actually jumped when some 200 pages in a character fell over but in it's inexorable advance we get plenty of time to watch the progression of Steerpike's plans and to marvel at his callous, unflinching manipulation of those around him.
It's a book unlike anything else I've read with a bold and frankly astounding vision at it's heart and I wish I liked it more than I did but really I've never been much of a fantasy fan but like it I did and I'm looking forward to book two to see where this long, drawn out introduction to the gothic environs of Gormenghast and it's inhabitants leads.
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