An enormous pleasure to read.

Titus Groan is the first book of the Gormenghast trilogy (before Gormenghast and Titus Alone).

The castle of Gormenghast is a huge, maze-like fortress built on the side of a mountain. It's surrounded by a tall wall, that helps keep the noble "Castle" people and their menials inside, and the "Bright Carvers", a tribal people who live in mud dwellings, outside on the arid plain.

In this first volume, we're introduced to the castle's inhabitants, amidst the bustle of Titus the seventy-seventh Earl's birth, and a few days later, of his christening. There's the melancholic Lord Sepulchrave, the seventy-sixth and current Earl of Groan, his enormous wife Gertrude and her white cats, and their teenage daughter Fuchsia. And there is Mrs. Slagg, the frail old Nanny who's always complaning about her poor heart, and Mr. Flay, the Earl's tall first servant with the clicking knees. And also Mr. Rottcodd, curator of the Hall of Bright Carvings, and Sourdust the Librarian, guardian of the Protocol. Doctor Prunesquallor with his nervous laughter, and his spinsterly sister Irma, as well as Swelter the tyrannic cook and his kitchen boys, among which the young Steerpike. Then come Cora and Clarice, the Earl's asinine twin sisters, envious of his and Gertrude's power... and a few others.

As the story flows, we watch these numerous protagonists interact, as Steerpike slowly works his way up the ranks of the castle. Charming high-born ladies, plotting arson, nothing daunts him. And what was a so well-greased, fine-tuned machine of minutiae and protocol, the very essence of Gormenghast, is starting to crumble slowly and inexorably.

It's very hard to summarize Titus Groan in a couple of paragraphs. It's so brimming with court intrigue and mischief, interspaced with lush descriptions of this amazingly intricate fortress where I wanted to escape to, or play hide and seek in. As a whole, all I can say it that it was an enormous pleasure to read and that I can't wait to read the next book.

8/10