I’ve always meant to read this book since my uncle brought it to my house, but it stood there on my bookshelf for years, forgotten hahahaha. Some weeks ago I decided to pick it up, in a hope to cure my reading slump. Is it working? I’m not sure, lol.

This book is so interesting, like, the whole story is happened on this huge castle called Gormenghast, and it is described very royalty-like. For instance, the world inside the castle is separated with the outside world. My rusty ex-English Literature student brain was yelling about symbolism but I wisely ignored them whispers and kept reading for entertainment purpose only.

Anyways.

Quoting myself on my reading thread in twitter, if I was asked to illustrate this book, I would draw that huge doll house, with each of the characters visible through their own window in their own room—you know, that kind of illustration? This novel has that exact vibe, spiced with old proud family tradition and such.

And while its setting is on a castle, it somehow feels so empty? Please remind me if there’s some explanation on earlier chapters about this, but it feels like the only ones living there are only the characters that are mentioned in the story, only, like, fourteen people, plus a bunch of servants in the great kitchen. It isn’t, though, lol. There’s a bunch of gardener mentioned, and I believe there’s some house-keeper that keep the castle clean.

Some time near the end of the book, I just realized that this book’s genre can be counted as fantasy, lol. It feels like reading Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland—I have long accepted that the weird things inside the book are the most normal thing. The scene with the Earl Sepulchrave that makes me remember—the one when he—spoiler alert—is ‘possessed’ by the Owl, and when he kinda helped Mr. Flay to hides the chef’s body with dragging him together to be ‘devoured’ by the owls. The gothic theme is strong in these scenes.

What exhaust me, though, it’s the way Peake wrote his sentences, as how it can usually be found in classic novels—what I mean is the way there’s barely commas and the full-stop is at the end of the page, or even better (or worse), on the next two pages—just like what I’m trying to do right now with this paragraph. I admit it, writing like this is fun, but it is kinda hard to read??

Also, there’s a special chapter that only contains the narration of what’s going on in each character’s head at a particular ceremony. It’s absolutely a nice and creative idea, but it also absolutely hard to read—because there’s not even an em-dash there, lmao.

Anyways.

It’s 4/5 for me, because, old castle! Secret rooms! The earl’s wife that has lots of white, spotless cats! And birds! Also, do I mention old castle already? I think if you like works from Edgar Allan Poe, Lewis Carroll, Neil Gaiman, books like The Spiderwick Chronicles, and perhaps Tim Burton’s works in general, perhaps you will like this book. (This series is definitely very AU-able, like people make Harry Potter AU, somehow I can imagine a Gormenghast AU, lmao.)

I will definitely continue to the second book on the series!