The Gormenghast Trilogy
Mervyn Peake · 1946
No heroes, no quests; just an impossibly vast decaying castle and a society trapped in ritual. Steerpike's rise is one of fiction's great villainous arcs, and Peake's prose belongs to no school but his own. The anti-Tolkien of the 20th century.
The case against
Peake describes a corridor the way other novelists describe a war, and there are many corridors. Titus himself barely registers as a character in his own trilogy, and the third volume, written as Parkinson's took Peake's faculties, collapses into fragments that loyal readers defend and honest ones mourn. Enter for the prose; expect no engine but the prose.
Science Fiction & Fantasy · the Pro canon
The case for it and the rest of the canon open with Pro.
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