Gormenghast

The sprawling, crumbling castle of Gormenghast is ruled by the Groan dynasty and governed entirely by ancient ritual, a daily round of ceremonies whose origins no one recalls but no one dares break. Into the rigid order of the castle climbs Steerpike, a clever and ruthless kitchen boy determined to seize power by any means. Meanwhile Titus Groan, the seventy-seventh earl, grows from infancy toward a restless adolescence, increasingly unwilling to accept the suffocating rites that govern his every move. Peake fills the castle with grotesque, unforgettable figures and renders it all in dense, painterly prose, building a closed world that decays under the weight of its own ancient observances.