Gormenghast

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Gormenghast is a series of Gothic Fantasy novels written by British author Mervyn Peak over a period of 1946 to 1959, with more books further fleshing out the life of its protagonist, Titus Groan, having been planned but never being written due to his unfortunate death by Parkinson's Disease. The series takes its name from its central location; a mountain-sized and decaying castle called "Gormenghast", a lost relic of an ancient age were all life has been shackled to rituals to the extent that the castle exists in a kind of timeless limbo, whose vestigial inhabitants don't so much "live" as simply carry out an endless loop of recorded days. All logic and reason has been forsaken here; there is only Ritual and Tradition.

Low Fantasy to the point that only the sheer bizarreness of the setting prevents it from being Historical Fantasy, Gormenghast is nonetheless incredibly evocative, and paints an incredible picture of a strange, twisted landscape where sanity has been lost and the weight of history smothers everything. If you want to create epic dungeons or castles for D&D, or get into the kind of mentality of a noble house in Warhammer 40,000, reading Gormenghast will definitely help you out.