About This World
Gormenghast is a civilization, a cosmos, an organism of stone. No one knows where it ends or how many rooms it contains. Its inhabitants live by ritual so ancient that their original purpose is forgotten. The Groan family has sat at the center of these ceremonies for seventy-seven generations. Titus Groan, the seventy-seventh Earl, fights the very thing he was made to inherit. Into this world crept Steerpike: a kitchen boy of calculating ambition who saw the crumbling rituals as a ladder.
Notable Locations
The Tower of Flints
A dark, rook-haunted tower at the castle heart: lonely, ancient, and unnecessary.
The Great Kitchen
A vast hall of steam, iron, and shouting: the engine room of daily life in Gormenghast.
The Library
A labyrinthine space housing thousands of volumes: some undisturbed for centuries.
The Hall of the Bright Carvings
Where the best carvings from the rooftop people are preserved: a gallery of desperate craft.
The Roofscape
The kingdom-within-a-kingdom above the castle proper, inhabited by the carvers who live their entire lives among chimneys and slates.
The Attic
Lord Sepulchrave's private retreat: a place of silence and melancholy.
