"It led on and on; vistas of forgotten metal; moribund, stiff in a thousand attitudes of mortality; with not a rat, not a mouse; not a bat, not a spider. Only the Lamb, sitting in his high chair with a faint smile upon his lips; alone in the luxury of his vaulted chamber, where the red carpet was like blood, and the walls were lined with books that rose up...up... volume after volume until the shadows engulfed them."
pickThe title story of this collection is fabulous. If the details in Titus Alone weren't enough evidence, the setting of this novella firmly places the world of Gormenghast in some kind of post-apocalypse future in which vestiges of an advanced technology linger in scattered places. In BiD, Peake gives us the horror of the Lamb, able to dominate others by force of will and to bend their bodies into the bestial shapes of their id. Absolutely 5/5🌟
“There is a kind of laughter that sickens the soul. Laughter when it is out of control: when it screams and stamps its feet, and sets the bells jangling in the next town. Laughter in all its ignorance and its cruelty. Laughter with the seed of Satan in it. It tramples upon shrines; the belly-roarer. It roars, it yells, it is delirious: and yet it is as cold as ice. It has no humour. It is naked noise and naked malice.”
Boy in Darkness and Other Stories | 
