The Gormenghast books are one of my all-time favourite fantasy series. I can't count the number of times I've read this opening volume, but I've just finished reading it again so here we are. It's a monstrous, grotesque, ridiculous, overwritten mutant of a book but I love it anyway, Dickensian Gothic as it is. I just find it extraordinarily entertaining. Original and highly imaginative, it's the characters (castle as well as cast) that make this book so wonderful. I'd love to spend a month or so exploring the sprawling mass of Gormenghast castle, the best castle in all of fantasy lit, but as always I am completely incapable of picking a favourite character. They're all so bizarrely attractive: Flay with his constantly cracking knees, Nannie Slagg with her ancient whiny speech, Countess Gertrude with her birds and cats, and the creepy twins, who are the cause of what, in this read at least, is my new favourite phrase from Titus Groan: "Cora's voice (like the body of a plaice translated into sound)" by which Peake means flat, and a day later I am still laughing.

I love this book.