Settings can have just as much life as the characters in our stories, but if we’re careful, we can also turn our settings into characters unto themselves. The Gormenghast series by Mervyn Peake is perhaps the best example of this I’ve ever seen. He makes Gormenghast, the city-sized castle, a living, breathing, empathetic character, and he does it in so subtle a fashion you don’t even realized it’s happened until you finish the book and you find yourself thinking of the setting as an old friend.