The Vorrh (The Vorrh Trilogy)

This is not a book for the lighthearted; I will stipulate that for those that skim the first line of a review and choose to take it to themselves beyond all other criticism.I have remained a diehard fan of any sort of surrealist/fantastical/historical fiction throughout my life, especially when it seems to (vaguely, even) make sense. This book does not follow through with my last bit of criteria; in this case, however, I find myself strangely comfortable with that concept. To suggest that Catling's first literary work has a tendency to meander is a bit of an understatement; that being said, it is also surprisingly what manages to tie the entire novel together into an eccentric but cohesive whole. The cast of characters introduced is vast, colorful, diverse, and very rarely in contact with one another.I will reiterate that this book is not for everyone: it conjures up a fantastical journey into a strange amalgamation of fiction, fantasy, [a smattering of steampunk, Bakelite-bots?], theology, and the capricious yet captivating style reminiscent of Catling's fans such as Moore and Gilliam. I'd be disappointed if Neil Gaiman doesn't present his thoughts on the matter at some point, if he hasn't already. It is the Heart of Darkness for the more whimsical, imaginative generation that I believe has finally started to come into its own; I may be eating those last words at some point, but my stance on this work remains the same. I'm currently two chapters in on 'The Erstwhile', and remain captivated.

The prose are dense, plodding, and frequently obtuse. Some of the characters were interesting, lots of potential...but with very little payoff. There are a few moments which sparkle with dark magic, but you have to wade through far too much rough to make it worthwhile.It's clearly set up for sequels, so don't go into it thinking that it will be a satisfying read as a standalone novel...how very disappointed you will be! I regret the time it took me to plow through the ending, and won't be wasting my time on the rest of the trilogy...If anyone else has finished the series, I would be curious to know: what was the point of including Muybridge? He never interacts with any of the other characters and his storyline seemed completely out of left field...perhaps the device he invented becomes integral later on in the story? Even so, it seems like a waste/filler to dedicate one-third of the entire book on him.

The description of this book was enough to lull me to its literary shores, what with a bow made from the remains of a dead wife, robots and a cyclops, but none of that could have prepared me for plunging headfirst into "The Vorrh." While the book's plot didn't pan out quite how I expected, and there were times where I was left a bit confused about what was going on, Brian Catling's writing style guided me through with a gentle and oh-so-very-poetic hand. I know I'll have to read this bad boy over again to truly absorb the totality of the plot (if that's possible), but I also know this is now one of my favorite books. Before reading it yourself, I suggest you prepare for a literary fever dream and leave your expectations at page one. I know there's a second book in this planned trilogy, but the first one left me so satisfied I'm not sure it even needs a follow up. That said, I still look forward to reading more of Mr. Catling's elegant scribblings.

Mesmerizing, magical, gruesome, mystical, beautiful and moving. It is a testimony to the poetic talent and odd artistic sense that BC is able to create the scenes so exquisitely vivid and the characters so compellingly nuanced that even if there were plenty of parts which were graphic (which is what life is), maybe even cruel, it did not feel self-indulgently told just to shock the reader. I parallel this to the reality that life/history has its ever regular occurrences of serial killers in its midst alongside the likes of Mother Teresa's. These two elements shall always run alongside each other. The wonder is here is someone who can writes in manner that has the words dancing in your mind while the pictures are burned in your consciousness. BC has an incredible depth of understanding & awareness of the human pathos.I personally do NOT like to spend time with fiction. Most are trite & predictable; black and white, good guy vs bad guy. This is not the case with Brian Catling. The only other fiction author that lets my imagination soar mentally, psychologically, emotionally is Murakami. Definitely surreal just like him.The Vohrr is not reading. It's an experience.

Expect to the impressed with the quality of the writing. Expect to be disgusted by what happens in this story. Expect not to have an answer at the end. This book is worth reading for the journey it puts you through, not in search of answers.Actually, that is the point of the book. If you look for definitive purpose in this book, you are just like the fools who think knowledge can be found on a tree in the center of The Vorrh. Instead, you will find an endless mire.

I want to give this 4.65 stars, but that isn't an option. I'm pretty stingy with stars...This book often reads like poetry, and it has a haunting quality, though it often seems a victim of its own ambition... I'm uncertain how to put into words its understated, verbose, caustic magnificence. Yet it also disappointed in some ways. It's certainly not the most accessible work, and will appeal only to litterati, not one iota to twitterati...That being said, it was an intense and enjoyable journey, and I purchased the sequel (The Erstwhile) while still only half done with The Vorrh, as I knew I didn't want the strange trip to end...So, yeah, just my 2 cents.

Almost the best book I've ever read, although that "almost" is doing quite a lot of work. The language is languid and dreamily gorgeous - if you're in a hurry to get to the point, you won't like it - but ideally suited to describing a nebulous forest that no-one can quite remember crossing... Characters are believably flawed - products of their upbringing and environment - and even the most saintly has his/her moments of jealousy, insecurity or irrationality. Best still are the landscapes, painted in Impressionist tones and language that will reward (and sometimes require) multiple readings to really untangle.If you like China Mieville, Victorian Gothic and/or acid, you'll love it. However, do yourself a favour - when you get 90-95% of the way through, stop reading and dream the rest yourself, promising to finish it one day and never quite managing. The ending is deeply, deeply unsatisfactory, with multiple sub-plots just tailing off into thin air or irrelevance. It's either a case of amazingly poor editing or a slightly tawdry exercise in selling sequels that jars discordantly against what's otherwise a truly tremendous novel. Maybe it's intended to be a reflection of the Vorrh itself, deflecting and dissembling until the end, but the cynic in me suggests otherwise. It's a real shame, as wrapped up effectively this book would be a once-in-a-generation event; as it it, it ends on a slightly sour note that spoils the experience.

Englishman Peter Williams served as an armourer in the Great War. Seeking motivation after that massive struggle, and awed by the power and magic of THE VORRH, a forest in one of Germany’s few African colonies, he sets out to explore. It’s a forest which - says Williams, “…can not only think, it can memorize and steal the memories of others.” But Williams isn’t just Williams, he’s ONEOFTHEWILLIAMS an ego of extra-human powers and armed with ESTE a sentient shooting bow. There he stalks – and is stalked by TSUNGALI an African hunter, and menaced by SIDRUS.GHERTRUDE TULP lives in nearby ESSENWALD, a town built almost as a facsimile of a town in Germany. She lives in a large house, in isolation but for her manservant MUTTER and a cyclops boy called ISHMAEL who lives sealed off in the basement, a virtual prisoner and brought up by a group of robots known as THE KIN.DR HOFFMAN also lives in Essenwald, and nearby lives red-headed McLish, keeper of the LIMBOIA (evidently means literally the ‘Lost’) and apparently motiveless were it not for their leader THE HERALD who drives them as a native workforce cutting down and transporting trees. The Limboia seem to have the ability to raise the dead with ritual involving heavy breathing and mirrors. McLish and Hoffman it seems are up to no good.EADWEARD MUYBRIDGE (yes, that one!) has a connection to the Limboia in that they use mirrors to induce resurrection. But their technique is mystical, whereas Muybridge’s is photo- scientific. There’s lots of whirring, clicking, and humans going into super-human spasms.So, you get the point. The novel THE VORRH – named after the forest – by B CATLING, is well weird. And yes, Muybridge the famous photographer died in 1904, so what’s he doing cropping up somewhere between 1918 and 39? It’s alternative history, and the whole thing is weird and wonderful. The writing style is unique. Catling manages to endow physical objects with sentience, and states of mind with physical characteristics. “His face shook as if it had been hit with a frozen gravedigger’s spade.” “McLish under the bed, his voice humming strangely in the resonance of the china chamber pot.” “It was as if the air itself had been chopped and a segment removed from the room.” “The iron hooves of the tin clock stampeded into his dense and sweated dream.”When you read something unlike anything you’ve read before, it’s impossible to resist grasping for the nearest thing you have read. Not wishing to endow the book with a comparison it might not be worthy of - or it worthy of the book, I dare to suggest valid comparison with Peake’s Gormenghast, Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Burgess’ A Clockwork Orange, the works of the Brothers Grimm, the poems of Arthur Rimbaud, Susanna Clarke’s Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, and The Bible, though I must confess that I have not read every word of the Bible. If the medium were painting, it’s rather like exploring the surreal land/mindscapes of Max Ernst or the nightmarish faces of James Ensor.If you are a slave to ‘the narrative arc’, this is not the book for you. If you are a stickler for static character points of view, or even the ‘free independent style’ this is not the book for you. If you are the sort of person who goes on cosy creative writing courses held in rustic cottages in France, this is not the book for you. If you don’t like lengthy diversions from the narrative path, then this is not the book for you. But consider, if there were no diversions in fiction, there would be no Proust, no Dickens, and Lawrence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy would have been removed from all libraries. Catling somehow manages to turn ‘overwriting’ into a fine art. His character points of view ricochet all over the place, but the result is splendid. When I read, I want an experience in which I am transcended above the printed page into a world full of rich sounds, rhythms, and images. This is it!My only criticism – and I’ve yet to be proved wrong because The Vorrh is only the first book of a trilogy, book number 2 is The Erstwhile, and 3 is Cloven - is that I can’t find any underlying philosophy. What I mean exactly by that is that when – for instance you read a novel by say - Ursula le Guinn you enter a world of fantasy, but it’s a world which is still recognizable, has clear rules, it’s easy to spot the baddies and goodies. I haven’t yet experienced that with B Catling, and somehow, everything seems to be seen from the outside rather than within; surface, rather than depth, the characters – creatures or entities seem more like computer game avatars. But as I say, there’s two books still to go!

I'm not going to say this is the best book I've read in a long time, even though it is. You'd have to know what other books I've read to make sense of such a statement. I will say this: 'The Vorrh' is sublime. It is evocative, the language is beautiful with inventive phrasing and whole paragraphs that just sing at you. It does not hold back. The violence is violent, the sex is sexual and the magic is truly mystical. Nothing here feels like it has been done before. Some of the events are so original that you will gasp. I have to say when I finished reading it my first thought was 'where has this writer been hiding?'This is a book I will read again and again. I will think about it in quiet hours. I will wonder.I mean, what the hell do you make of passages like this:"It was said that he was hunting stillness, and that instead of picks or shovels, guns or maps, he carried an empty box on his back, a box with a single eye which ate time."In the last quarter of the book I thought the dialogue suffered from an excess of exclamation points, but this is a quibble.Just read it. You won't be sorry.

Despite it's brio and early inventiveness, I wanted an editor to challenge some of the writing/concepts – it could have been a great book at half the size. The approach to queerness appeared 19th century (Joris-Karl Huysmans' 'Against Nature'); even fantasy can say a lot about us. Ursula K. Le Guin's 'The Left Hand Of Darkness' still feels like the contemporary benchmark.

I read this book because the author had die recently and the press coverage talked about the impact of the book. Was not particularly impressed. I know it is the first part of three books, but it does not make me want to read the other two. maybe because it was part one that it had may story lines but they did not seem connected so it seemed like different stories put together. I'm glad I read it because I would have felt I was missing out if I had not. Now I can just get on with my life.