In Which My Nerdy Dreams Come True.

I've always been enamoured with stories that involve setting with so much character its almost alive--particularly deep, dark, hitherto unexplored and ancient buildings.

I wanted to be an archeologist when I was little. Maybe that's it. I love browsing around the Urban Exploration Ring to see what crumbling beauty of a building someone's found and photographed. I stumbled onto the ring while I was researching the vast and mysterious network of tunnels and catacombs under Paris.

Up until this point, the closest I'd found a few books which I love (among other reasons) for that mystery/exploration aspect: Garth Nix's Lirael contains an ancient library with levels and sublevels that go below where people remember anyone ever having been, and ultimately, Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast Castle is practically a character in the trilogy, with its unending corridors and turrets.

My favorite scene is in the first book, when Steerpike crosses the roofs. He escapes out a window, and edges his way onto the vast field of turrets and rooftops. It's days before he finds a way down again. Some of the things he sees:

• From a distant wall, a massive tree has grown horizontally out and up. Tiny figures of people can be seen taking their tea on its trunk.
• Far below, in a valley where several roofs meet, rainwater has collected into a pool. A white horse is swimming in it.
• At an open shutter, he meets an old poet, living in a room in an abandoned part of the castle.

Gormenghast is not magical, persay, but the trilogy is often lumped with fantasy books because it's filled with mysterious and bizzare charcters.

Which I just love.