The Gormenghast Novels

Understand that if I could only get you to take my book advice a couple of times, this is one of the works I'd want you to experience.

Gormenghast is a vast an ancient kingdom set we-know-not-where in an unknown time. Its centerpiece is a sprawling castle filled with a giant gallery of grotesques, and we discover it just as a bitter, vengeful kitchen boy begins a ruthless and brilliant rise to power, even as the heir apparent comes of age, angry, sullen and wishing to be free of his weighty heritage.

This work really isn't like anything else in the literary world. I had it first recommended to me almost forty years ago because I was reading, again, the Lord of the Rings. "If you like that," said my teacher, "you'll probably like this." Well, on the face of it, that recommendation is absurd. Peake's books were marketed as fantasy adventures, but there is not a single hint of magic, not the slightest dash of fantastic creatures.

What it has in commmen with Tolkein and other fantasy greats is a completely realized created world, a world that at once makes no sense and which makes perfect sense. And good lord can Peake write. The language in these books is a finely wrought and dense as poetry, and it just keeps coming. Just to read his description of a set of rooms is awesome.

The characters are all bizarre-- extreme grotesques and yet somehow completely human. There is action, political machinations, well-turned plot threads, stunning set pieces-- even some of the most hilarious passages and scenes I've ever read.

This volume collects the three published novels. The first two are the heart of the work, detailing Steerpike's vicious rise to power and Titus's attempt to avoid it. The third, written later and not entirely completed before Peake was wracked by debilitating illness, literally takes us into another world. This volume also includes the few brief notes completed for a fourth work. Also included are some scholarly articles and Peake's own drawings (he was actually an illustrator by trade).

This is a book I read again every few years, and I always approach the last pages with sadness to think that this is all there is. But what there is is a lot, a fabulous reading feast. This book gets the highest recommendation I know how to give.