Gormenghast

Gormenghast is the kind of book where I’d catch myself reading a sentence twice, not because I was lost, but because the sentence itself was doing something worth sitting with. Peake was a painter before he was a novelist and it shows constantly, the castle itself gets more sustained, loving description than most human characters get in an entire novel, every crumbling stair and moss covered courtyard rendered like it’s the actual protagonist.

Steerpike is the real engine of the plot, a kitchen boy scheming his way up through the castle’s rigid hierarchy, and he’s a genuinely great villain, calculating without ever tipping into cartoonish. Titus, meanwhile, is barely present for most of this book, off screen or swaddled for long stretches, which I understand frustrates readers expecting a coming of age story centered on him specifically. I didn’t mind it much, the castle and its ossified rituals are doing the real character work here, Titus is almost secondary to the atmosphere.

Where I’ll admit the book lost me a little is pacing. Peake luxuriates in description to the point that plot momentum stalls out for entire chapters, and I found myself wishing, more than once, for an editor willing to trim even a fraction of it. I’ve seen the comparison to a slow, painterly read like a Gothic 100 Years of Solitude and that tracks for me, gorgeous images, a plot that moves in fits rather than a steady line.

Four stars. Not something I’d recommend to someone wanting momentum, but as a pure atmosphere and prose experience it’s genuinely unlike anything else on my shelf, and I get why it’s inspired musicians and writers who never even touch the fantasy genre otherwise.