As the novel opens, Titus, lord of Castle Gormenghast, has abdicated his throne. Born and brought to the edge of manhood in the huge, rotting castle, Titus rebels against the age-old ritual of which he is both lord and prisoner and rushes headlong into the world.

From that moment forward, he is thrust into a stormy land of a dark imagination, where figures and landscapes loom up with the force and vividness of a dream--or a nightmare.

This final installment in the Gormenghast Trilogy is a fantastic triumph--a conquest awash in imagination, terror, and charm.

Introduction by David Louis Edelman

Praise for the Gormenghast Trilogy:

"There is nothing in literature like Mervyn Peake's remarkable Gormenghast novels . . . They were crafted by a master, who was also an artist, and they take us to an ancient castle as big as a city, with heroes and villains and people larger than life that are impossible to forget." --Neil Gaiman

"[Peake's books] are actual additions to life; they give, like certain rare dreams, sensations we never had before, and enlarge our conception of the range of possible experience." --C. S. Lewis, author of The Chronicles of Narnia

"His inventiveness, his ingenuity, and his humor are astonishing." --San Francisco Chronicle