Reviews

The Vorrh by Brian Catling

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benegesserwitch's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark mysterious slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

2.75

Content Warnings

sydneyrp143's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective sad tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.25

timinbc's review against another edition

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1.0

"B. Catling is a poet, sculptor, painter and performance artist." Hmm. Henceforth I may stick to books by authors.

Terry Gilliam and Tom Waits liked this book. Jeff Vandermeer says it "reads like a long-lost classic of Decadent or Symbolist literature." No doubt someone else says Catling's sensibilities are informed by a contempt for post-something, deconstructionalism and a desire to bring a new structure to fantasy unencumbered by such things as a coherent plot.

There are large chunks here that appear to be part of a real book in which someone is telling you a story. Then I guess the acid kicks in and Castaneda goes with J. G. Ballard and Sam Delany to the Heart of Darkness.

Eadweard Muybridge is here for no reason I can see except that perverts are always useful when you need a kinky sex scene because the plot has derailed. And why waste the research? Maybe he was meant to be in another book that fell through.

This book may have ended well. I'll never know, because I bailed after 300-some pages.

If you took four 300-level classes in philosophy, and speak of "lit'racher" and "the dance" (terpsichore, not pro sports), you might enjoy this. If you didn't, you might call it some of the rude words I'm thinking.

But I've read better far-out fantasy than this.

joaniffer's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark mysterious slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

sohxpie's review against another edition

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challenging slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated

2.0

First thing's first, the synopsis I read on the back of my edition doesn't really give you an idea of the story, so I was pretty clueless going into the novel. The prologue does a very good job at setting your expectations for the novel. It opens with a beautiful description of a hotel room, it's almost poetic but in the very next paragraph, we get a graphic description of a naked guy looking at himself in the mirror. It's a very odd change in tone. The whole book is pretty much this, wonderful descriptions that help build the world with weird sex scenes interspersed. I think my issue is that these scenes often don't add anything to the story. I mean at one point, I read a dog's sex dream. Yes, literally a vivid description of what a dog wanted to do sexually to another dog. It was plain weird and unnecessary. The story itself was fairly interesting, different characters with different journeys centering around The Vorrh. Sometimes it was a little confusing and difficult to follow the story but I think I got the idea most of the time. I think ultimately, I am not the target audience for this book, which isn't necessarily a bad thing but is possibly what hindered my enjoyment of the novel. I will give the second book a try, mainly because the story still seems intriguing but with the thought in mind that I may not enjoy it.