An exquisitely weird tale about a gigantic forest and how the lives, fates, and undoings of people and other beings are intertwined with its magic.

Don't take my words, take Alan Moore's- " Easily the current century's first landmark work of fantasy." Aptly put. Don't let the word "fantasy" put you in the mind of the same old stories about wizards and monsters. Catling transcends the genre, reminding us that fantasy comprises the fantastical and for to long it has been confined to a specific set of archetypes (however enjoyable they may be). He not only shows us a new type of fantasy, based in new cultures, but uses them to exmamine some of the classic tropes we are so use to reading. We need more fantasy writers like this.

The beginning of this book was reeeeeeeeally hard for me to get through. It was strange past the boundaries of most sci-fi shock factor. But the writing is descriptive and magical and the story line is haunting and worth pushing through the uncomfortable beginning.

The beginning of this book was reeeeeeeeally hard for me to get through. It was strange past the boundaries of most sci-fi shock factor. But the writing is descriptive and magical and the story line is haunting and worth pushing through the uncomfortable beginning.

Multiple points of view and stories of monsters, angels and historical characters circle around a forest in Africa that might be Eden. It doesn't quite pull together it's huge ambitions but there again it's only the first part of trilogy so maybe it will.

Reading The Vorrh ... Reading The Vorrh reminds me of the first time I read Gene Wolfe. Catling offers a very similar combination of mystery, allusion, tricky plots, some beautiful sentences, unpredictability, touches of horror, and a powerful sense of meaning just beneath the surface. The Vorrh is like Shadow of the Torturer in that it's a standalone book which is also, apparently, the start of a series. This is also my way of offering very high praise. If the Hugo awards matter ever again, this is now my second nomination for the year's best novel. It's the kind of book you reread parts of while reading, and which you begin again immediately upon finishing. It's not a comfortable, friendly book. The narrative(s) isn't (aren't) built that way. The Vorrh doesn't offer much in the way of characters you empathize with. Instead it's a challenge, a lunge in unexpected directions, energetically doing work on multiple levels not all of which the reader can grasp right away. I've been reading parts of this novel out loud, partly from pleasure, and also so dig more deeply into passages. It's that kind of book. Alan Moore compares it to Voyage to Arcturus, and that makes sense to me. ...before I go further with impressions and comparisons, I'll introduce what the book is actually about. Then I'll head into spoilers. The Vorrh doesn't have a single plot, but multiple storylines that intersect around a fantastic African forest of great antiquity, the titular Vorrh, during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. We follow a French writer who visits the forest, several Europeans living in a colonial city at the forest's edge, a local ex-soldier, the great Scots photographer Muybridge, and several local shamans and/or medical doctors, not to mention mysterious slaves, William Gull, a cyclops, monsters, robotic teaching puppets, a growing population of ghosts, a disembodied assassin, and, most importantly, a woman turned into a bow. Their stories dodge back and forth in time, especially as identities change or disappear. A note on genre: as you might gather from the preceding, The Vorrh is a fantasy, or a work of magic realism. We see realistic details alongside objects and forces drawn from myth and imagination. The forest seems to exist somewhere all across North Africa, stretching down along the eastern coast, yet also near the Mediterranean. As with, say, the works of Tim Powers, this novel works fantastic elements into the nitty gritty of daily life. It also reads like surrealist art and fiction, with genuinely strange scenes and ideas: a cyclops going to a carnival, after being taught from mysterious crates by helpful puppets. The Vorrh is also an adventure novel, with several characters engaged on epic quests, and including gunfire, ambushes, betrayals, curses, sex scenes, torture, and rebellion. *And* it's alternate history, positing a colonial enterprise that didn't exist, and including historical personages, such as Roussel, Gull and Muybridge. Additionally, steampunk fans may find some fun machines. A note on style: Catling has a flair for surprising word choice and lovely phrases, with touches of sardonic wit. Este had foreseen her death while working in our garden, an uncapping of momentum in the afternoon sun. (Kindle location 131) He stepped over a gurgling drain and emptied the bullets out of the gun; they fell like brass comets into the speeding firmament below. (4291) Cyrena Lohr combed the city and caught three names, which now wriggled in her teeth. (2589) "I want to be forgotten for who I am, not judged for how I have been made." (5934) For so it is among those who shed lives every few years: They keep their deflated interior causeways, hold them running parallel with their current usable ones; ghost arteries, sleeping shrunken next to those that pump life. Hushed lymphatics, like quiet ivy alongside the speeding juice of now. Nerve trees like bone coral, hugging the whisper of bellowing communications.(338) ...a great stench of hope rose... (3686) The camera was a collector not of light, but of time, and the time it cherished most was in the anticipation of death. (1609) She had found [a book] confused and obscure. No doubt it was art, for she knew him to be a man of dangerous appetites and total selfishness.(2001) She had a smouldering attractiveness that hid beneath a face that melted uncontrollably between the ages of eight and eighty-one. (5507) A note on references: The Vorrh opens with a flourish of entertaining allusions. Frobenius is there to make us think of German colonialism in Africa. Conrad brings up the European enterprise more generally. Zen and the Art of Archery teases us about the bow. Once the book gets going, Catling quietly builds up a larger referential world. The Bible is a touchstone throughout, sometimes literally. Flann O'Brien is namechecked once (2525) , to my delight. A note on politics: The Vorrh soaks in Europe's colonialist past, and runs all kinds of risks in doing so. European characters exploit and literally enslave the locals. Catling, not from Africa, narrates from local points of view. The entire enterprise risks something like Orientalism by creating a fantasty world in a far-off, exploitable land for colonial people to explore. But Catling pulls it off, I think. The Europeans don't fare that well, overall, resembling less Stanley and more Mungo Park. For example, (view spoiler)[several characters are killed, their slaves freed, and the crucial timber trade falls apart. We also never really learn about the heart of the forest, denying that grail to foreigners and readers alike. (hide spoiler)] And the Vorrh isn't really feminized. Kij Johnson goes further, arguing that "what this book is not, is about Africa". Do I recommend The Vorrh? Do I ever. But with cautions. It's challenging, not often giving readers comfortable ways in. The plots sprawl and their actions often suspend themselves. Reading enough of this novel brings about a kind of trance effect, not onlike watching a Tarkovsky film. This ain't Dragonlance. So read it. This may be the greatest fantasy of the decade. Here's one good review.