Read on and Lean!   

Titus the seventy-seventh. Heir to a crumbling summit: to a sea of nettles: to an empire of red rust: to rituals' footprints ankle deep in stone.
Gormenghast.
Withdrawn and ruinous it broods in umbra: the immemorial masonry: the towers, the tracts. Is all corroding? No. Through an avenue of spires a zephyr floats; a bird whiistles; a freshet bears away from a choked river. Deep in a fist of a stone doll's hand wriggles, warm rebellious on the frozen palm. A shadow shifts its length. A spider stirs...

And darkness winds between the characters.

Who are the characters? And what has he learned of them and of his home since that far off day when he was born to the Countess of Groan in a room alive with birds?

He has learned an alphabet of arch and aisle: the language of dim stairs and moth-hung quadrangles: his trees are pillars. And he has learned that there are always eyes. Eyes that watch. Feet that follow, and hands to hold him when he struggles, to lift him when he falls. Upon his feet again he stares unsmilling. Tall figures bow. Some in jewellery; some in rags.

The characters

The quick and the dead. The shapes, the voices that throng his mind, for there are days when the living have no substance and the dead are active.

Who are these dead - these victims of violence who no longer influence the tenor of Gormenghast save by a deathless repercussion? For riples are still widening in the dark rings and a movement runs over the gooseflesh waters through the drowned stones lie still. The characters who are but names to Titus, though one of them his father, and all of them alive when he was born. Who are they? For the child will hear of them.