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karp76's review against another edition
4.0
Here is a strange land. Here be angels. And monsters. Cyclops and robots. Fact and fiction woven and knotted into one another, one indecipherable from the next. We come into this strange land not knowing what to expect. We are lured by mystery and the unknown. We find mythology and history walking hand in hand, just enough to convince us to continue, that this is in the right hands. The flavors are familiar. The hints are closest, oddly enough, to those of Pynchon (sweeping and grandiose, a sense of world weariness, of its time and of its place). We read and we devour, clawing, demanding to see beneath the surface, only to reveal the only true taint of the work, that unlike Pynchon, true and meaningful poignancy is lacking or shallow at best. Most works would crumble at this, dissolve under the expectation not to be found. Not here. Catling has created something very special here. It is haunting and lyrical. A gem of weird literature. A tale born in this world but told in another. This is not for the faint of heart or the passive. Heroes will die and die awfully and questions will remain unanswered. It seems apt in here, in this place, the wilds of the Vorrh. There is more. This is the only beginning. I am eager for the rest.
bhirts's review against another edition
5.0
This is the most I’ve enjoyed reading a book and the first time I’ve had that “don’t want to it to be over” feeling in a long while. This may be a bit of a “Boss Baby”** take, but it reminded me a lot of Primeval by Olga Tokarczuk, and almost nothing else; albeit with more of a “blockbuster” feel, more violence, sex, monsters and magic (but much less of the latter than most proper “fantasy” novels).
I’ve casually noticed many of the reviews complained about the writing in this novel, calling it pretentious and overwrought etc., which surprised me greatly because the writing was one of the first things that I specifically so enjoyed. To me, prose *usually* only strikes me as “pretentious” when it comes from a clumsy and overeager attempt to “seize” beauty, mostly by extending descriptions in endless baroque arabesques (Lovecraft for example, as much as we all love him), while in The Vorrh Catling’s prose seems to simply describe things *differently*, rather than *over* describe them, in a way that, to me, felt like a genuine attempt to get at the fundamental experience of things. For instance, one sentence that particularly stuck with me was (paraphrased, as I can’t locate the exact passage) something about a stagecoach driver driving “as the street talked to hands through the reins”. Some may find that kind of thing unnatural, but to me it’s simply viscerally capturing the feeling of driving on a bumpy road.
This is more of a 4.5 for me truthfully, and I know that part of the reason I am skewing my rating so high is an optimism stemming from the fact that this is book one of a trilogy, and a hope that many, or at least some, of the as-yet-still-untied loose ends (essentially all of them) will find satisfactory resolutions in future books; a hope that both my heart and brain know is almost certainly misguided…
**by “Boss Baby take” I am referring to a classic tweet from @afraidofwasps which reads “Guy who has only seen The Boss Baby, watching his second movie: Getting a lot of 'Boss Baby' vibes from this...”; meaning a take that sprouts much more from the (limited) vocabulary of references of the viewer than anything else.
I’ve casually noticed many of the reviews complained about the writing in this novel, calling it pretentious and overwrought etc., which surprised me greatly because the writing was one of the first things that I specifically so enjoyed. To me, prose *usually* only strikes me as “pretentious” when it comes from a clumsy and overeager attempt to “seize” beauty, mostly by extending descriptions in endless baroque arabesques (Lovecraft for example, as much as we all love him), while in The Vorrh Catling’s prose seems to simply describe things *differently*, rather than *over* describe them, in a way that, to me, felt like a genuine attempt to get at the fundamental experience of things. For instance, one sentence that particularly stuck with me was (paraphrased, as I can’t locate the exact passage) something about a stagecoach driver driving “as the street talked to hands through the reins”. Some may find that kind of thing unnatural, but to me it’s simply viscerally capturing the feeling of driving on a bumpy road.
This is more of a 4.5 for me truthfully, and I know that part of the reason I am skewing my rating so high is an optimism stemming from the fact that this is book one of a trilogy, and a hope that many, or at least some, of the as-yet-still-untied loose ends (essentially all of them) will find satisfactory resolutions in future books; a hope that both my heart and brain know is almost certainly misguided…
**by “Boss Baby take” I am referring to a classic tweet from @afraidofwasps which reads “Guy who has only seen The Boss Baby, watching his second movie: Getting a lot of 'Boss Baby' vibes from this...”; meaning a take that sprouts much more from the (limited) vocabulary of references of the viewer than anything else.
hagbard_celine's review against another edition
2.0
Recommended by a coworker.
Disorienting. Parts of it read like "Heart of Darkness" after a lot of nitrous oxide cartridges have piled up around your feet.
Thing happened, some of them quite compelling and interesting. There was a cyclops, and a bow made from a person (who might be a witch), and there are ghosts, and there are perfectly preserved dead babies, and there are robot tutors made from Bakelite, and a shaman/plastic surgeon living in the woods, and angels on time delay, and a demon with an egg face, and I have no idea what the fuck I just read.
Alan Moore wrote the blurb. Of course he did.
Disorienting. Parts of it read like "Heart of Darkness" after a lot of nitrous oxide cartridges have piled up around your feet.
Thing happened, some of them quite compelling and interesting. There was a cyclops, and a bow made from a person (who might be a witch), and there are ghosts, and there are perfectly preserved dead babies, and there are robot tutors made from Bakelite, and a shaman/plastic surgeon living in the woods, and angels on time delay, and a demon with an egg face, and I have no idea what the fuck I just read.
Alan Moore wrote the blurb. Of course he did.
thorium0232's review against another edition
dark
mysterious
reflective
tense
slow-paced
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
wileyjuly's review against another edition
4.0
a book that needs to be reread. it’s as though the plot, meaning, and lore of the world were a closely kept secret that is never fully explained. it’s def there, however. B Catling was a very interesting man, and interviews with him on the process of writing “The Vorrh” yielded some interesting insights. for instance, he viewed his writing process as a sort of “revisional sculpting,” which only makes sense given the fact that he was an expiremental artist/sculptor. the writing was incredibly unique and the narrative eye seemed to place the same level of importance on every single detail in the story. don’t think i have any desire to read the other books, really. don’t think i have any impulse to reread this one either. not worth it.
upsidedownything's review against another edition
3.0
Surreal and meandering, but with juuuuust enough conflict and weird sex stuff to keep me til the end
hrgisahero's review against another edition
4.0
Umm, a fever dream with a little too much focus on the sexual development of one of the main characters. I love the twisting, winding dream logic mythology vibe.
taylor_hohulin's review against another edition
3.0
I'm kind of torn on this one. On the one hand, its gorgeously written and all kinds of good weird. And there's no hand-holding infodump to explain the weird, either. You just go with it and put the puzzle pieces together yourself.
That said, the story doesn't seem to get very far. I get that there are two more books in the series, but I would've preferred a little more resolution by the end of this one and a little more cohesion among all the stories.
Definitely a good weird read, but not as much as I'd hoped for.
That said, the story doesn't seem to get very far. I get that there are two more books in the series, but I would've preferred a little more resolution by the end of this one and a little more cohesion among all the stories.
Definitely a good weird read, but not as much as I'd hoped for.
braedenaddison's review against another edition
1.0
Boo. Tomato tomato tomato. This is what you get when a philosophy major tries to write fiction. Absolutely no plot. Too many characters that didn’t make any sense. I had high hopes reading the jacket notes. The concept of colonial Africa and finding the garden of Eden was so enticing. This story was just terrible. With androids that meant nothing? And the cyclops that meant nothing. If this one was better I might be inclined to read the series but I just cannot.