The Vorrh

By page 34 we learn all about this thing called THE VORRH:"For years it was said that nobody had ever reached the centre of the Vorrh. Or, if they had, then they had never returned.... It was the mother of forests; ancient beyond language, older than every known species, and, some said, propagator of them all, locked in its own system of evolution and climate.The banded foliage and vast trees that breathed its rich air offered much to humans but could also devour a thousand of their little lives in a microsecond of their uninterrupted, unfathomable time. So vast was its acreage, it also made its demands of time, splitting the toiling sun into zones outside of normal calibration; a theoretical traveler, passing through its entire breadth on foot, would have to stop at its centre and wait at least a week for his soul to catch up. So dense was it breathing, it dented the surrounding climate. Swirling clouds interacted with its shadow. Its massive transpiration sucked at the nearby city that fed from it, sipping from the lungs of its inhabitants and filling the skies with oxygen. It brought in storms and unparalleled shifts of weather. Sometimes it mimicked Europe, smuggling a fake winter for a week or two, dropping temperatures and making the city look and feel like its progenitor. Then it spun winds and heat to make the masonry crack after the tightness of the impossible frost... All its pathways turned to overgrowth, jungle, and ambush. The tribes that were rumoured to live there were barely human -- some said the anthropophagi still roamed. Creatures beyond hope. Heads growing below their shoulders. Horrors." [34]So begins a very unusual, dense and complex, beautifully written, fantasy/alternate history novel. This immense, mysterious forest called THE VORRH is the focal point of the novel, the point around which all the various stories and characters revolve. Catling fills his novel with a myriad of characters, some historical, some not. In some cases their paths cross, in others, not. There is Edward Muybridge (1830-1904) the famous English photographer and creator of the zoopraxiscope -- who hasn't seen his galloping horse photos? And William Gull (1816-1890) English physician to the Prince of Wales and Queen Victoria, and also a real suspect in the Jack the Ripper slayings in Whitechapel (though this fact isn't part of the book). There is also the Frenchman, Raymond Roussel (1877-1933), poet and novelist who wrote "Impressions of Africa" (and actually mentions the Vorrh) -- it is reported that Roussel's book was the inspiration for THE VORRH.To this cast of historical characters is added: Peter Williams, an enigmatic Englishman, veteran of the Great War trenches, possessed of a magical bow constructed from the physical remains of Irrinipeste, a woman of the True People. The arrows he shoots guides him through the Vorrh; Tsungali, a strange, scarified native who years before had started the Possession Wars, now hunts Williams to prevent him from venturing through the Vorrh; Ishmael, a young cyclops boy, raised by robots in the basement of an otherwise abandoned house, with supplies delivered by Sigmund Mutter; two women, Cyrena Lohr, and Ghertrude Tulp, both in love with Ishmael, but for different reasons. These, and many other characters make up THE VORRH.At the edge of the Vorrh, stands the colonial city of Essenwald, moved there brick by brick by brick from its original location in Europe. Here many of the characters live, die, pass through. Essenwald survives on the timber of the Vorrh, carefully harvested from the periphery, for no one dare spend too much time in the Vorrh -- it erases your memory and drives men mad. The harvesting is done by slaves, the Limboia, an apparently hollow and soulless race. Whether they are born that way, or it is the Vorrh which made them that way, is not clear.What shines in THE VORRH above all else, above all the dizzying number of characters and plot lines, is Catling's sensuous, dreamlike prose. One reviewer said it the best: Catling didn't so much write THE VORRH, as paint it. THE VORRH stands alone in my memory of fantasy novels. I've never read anything quite like it.

A preposterous fantasy that kept me reading. Catting writes well and draws interesting characters well.Toward the end, the book became way out of bounds. Read it and see. This is a book for hardcore fantasy fans.

I haven't finished the story yet but I don't feel badly about posting an early review; I may never get through the entire book. The premise of the story is interesting but frankly, the author never met a noun he could resist modifying six times before tossing it into print and, overall, the prose is very nearly as tortuous to read as this that I've just written; throw in a few more subordinate clauses and a bit more superfluous exposition and you've got a fairly good sample of the wearying stuff. Reading it is a bit like hacking through the underbrush of the titled forest. Now sometimes this turns out to be a very good thing in the long run of a complex tale; we'll see. I guess if it drives me off before I can finish it, I would say the tale itself matters very little in the end.If the story turns out to have been remarkably worthwhile all the effort, if I get through it within say, about six months, I'll update this review and take it all back.

I was apprehensive to purchase this book after reading all the poor reviews. After finishing it however, I can safely say that I do not agree with the majority of them. Yes, this book is dense and has several plot lines. It is no more complicated than reading the Game of Thrones series, which has a similar writing structure. If you cannot keep straight the individual yet related plots of the Bowman, the Frenchman, the Cyclops, and Tsungali the hunter then maybe this book is beyond your capabilities. I will agree that the word choice is a bit on the ornate side, and I can understand the arguments of those who say it is too verbose. However, the lush, twisted writing and overall structure of this book mimic the very essence of the Vorrh.That being said, this is a remarkable and imaginative work of fantasy. It is set in a fictional version of Africa sometime between 1800 and 1950. It follows several characters as they interact with a a dense and magical forest called the Vorrh. It is clear that the author was greatly influenced by classic works such as The Heart of Darkness as well as other turn of the century artists and thinkers who explored the tenebrosity of humanity. I highly recommend this book if you enjoy to be challenged mentally and morally and you prefer a novel that is out of the mainstream.

Ummm… look, maybe this book is too smart for me. It was recommended by Reddit (probably my first mistake). There were a few parts that were good and most parts were… meh. I just couldn’t keep with it.