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A review by acaskoftroutwine
The Erstwhile by Brian Catling
dark
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.5
The Erstwhile is a difficult book to review for me for different reasons than The Vorrh. Whereas The Vorrh was difficult due to the sheer breadth of the novel and how difficult it was to encapsulate exactly why it worked, The Erstwhile is a much simpler novel that loses a lot of what I enjoyed about the first one, but somehow I still devoured the book.
The book falls into the problem of most sequels, i.e. it simply expands on what the first book already did. Whereas the first book is constantly able to present us with new ideas both fantastical and grotesque, this just keeps returning to those elements, but in a way that makes it feel more mundane. Elements that created a sense of the unknown are passively brought up and skipped past, if not mostly abandoned. As a relevant example, the Erstwhile in the first book are introduced in a few scenes with stunning descriptions, of how their bodies are made up of disparate matter now as they attempt to accumulate form and permanence. Meanwhile, in this book, the Erswhile are mainly just introduced as blackened corpses. While the disparity is explained, the description as something both twistedly beautiful and evoking pity is lost.
What's worse, most of the book is written in a passive voice, simply summarizing the actions. In the beginning, it wasn't as noticeable because it was recapping the events of The Vorrh, but after a hundred or so pages I realized that the whole book was written in this way. The first books use of beautiful language and imagery was one of its greatest strengths, but its dropped in this book outside of a few moments.
The Vorrh was about a lot of things, most of which I went over in my review for that book, but mainly I would say that it's about the conflict between people attempting to understand the world or themselves and the difficulty or impossibility of that pursuit. This book I would say is more about dealing with the damage inflicted by those in power on those without, and how people respond to that. Some of them are more complicit in their situations than others.
The novel had the cyclops Ishmael go through a kind of character development that I find to be both rare and realistic. He's one of the few characters I've read who becomes worse due to admitting his vulnerabilities. The first novel has him go through a kind of hero's journey, traveling into the Vorrh as part of the novel's twisted take on the quest narrative. He nearly dies, decides to integrate into human society, returns, and settles down having been seemingly humbled. This book takes that and shows that everything he went through if anything has now made him worse. These traits of his, his misanthropy and feelings of superiority, don't just go away. And the fact that people have seen him humbled only worsens his behavior and resentment toward them.
His journey back into the Vorrh in the last half of the novel is also a highlight. The horrifying experiences of the mercenary group sent into the forest to retrieve the lost group of slaves and Ishmael's scheming were one of the parts of the book that were as tense and gripping as the first book.
There's also a new character named Hector Schumann, a German professor who gets pressed out of retirement by an ascendant Reich and becomes entangled in an investigation in England about the origin and possible uses of titular Erstwhile, who have begun to awaken across the world. A man of Jewish heritage, Schumann has to deal with his relationship with both Germany and the Reich as the investigation goes on.
And of course, that brings us to The Erstwhile themselves, forgotten, not fallen, angels, who because of their failure to prevent the biblical Fall were left abandoned on Earth. You could say that they're some of the biggest victims in the book, filled with such self-loathing that they auto-interr themselves. Seeking relief and substance, they have become twisted things of matter.
A lot of these ideas are interesting, but I don't feel that they get fully fleshed out in the book. Most of the events are summarized rather than explored, and I would say that a lot of the book feels like an extended epilogue to the first book, or a prologue to the third, rather than a full book in its own right.
Sadly, the book also mostly drops the short vignettes and side narratives of the first novel, but luckily we still get the detailed and darkly absurd history of the creation of Adam Longfellar, the world's most elaborate sculpture/guillotine. Catling is incredible at writing these little short narratives in his books, and again I wish he had a book of short stories published.
To conclude, the book is uneven, and I didn't find it as well-written or as memorable as the first one. The book seemed mainly concerned with answering questions posed by the first book, and while the answers range from unnecessary to interesting, the book doesn't really have enough going on to justify itself. But reading it I blew through dozens of pages at a time, and I never thought it insulted or ruined my enjoyment of the first book. Overall it mostly just felt unnecessary. However I'm still going to see it through and read the third book, hopefully it's a return to form and closer in style to the first one rather than this one.
The book falls into the problem of most sequels, i.e. it simply expands on what the first book already did. Whereas the first book is constantly able to present us with new ideas both fantastical and grotesque, this just keeps returning to those elements, but in a way that makes it feel more mundane. Elements that created a sense of the unknown are passively brought up and skipped past, if not mostly abandoned. As a relevant example, the Erstwhile in the first book are introduced in a few scenes with stunning descriptions, of how their bodies are made up of disparate matter now as they attempt to accumulate form and permanence. Meanwhile, in this book, the Erswhile are mainly just introduced as blackened corpses. While the disparity is explained, the description as something both twistedly beautiful and evoking pity is lost.
What's worse, most of the book is written in a passive voice, simply summarizing the actions. In the beginning, it wasn't as noticeable because it was recapping the events of The Vorrh, but after a hundred or so pages I realized that the whole book was written in this way. The first books use of beautiful language and imagery was one of its greatest strengths, but its dropped in this book outside of a few moments.
The Vorrh was about a lot of things, most of which I went over in my review for that book, but mainly I would say that it's about the conflict between people attempting to understand the world or themselves and the difficulty or impossibility of that pursuit. This book I would say is more about dealing with the damage inflicted by those in power on those without, and how people respond to that. Some of them are more complicit in their situations than others.
The novel had the cyclops Ishmael go through a kind of character development that I find to be both rare and realistic. He's one of the few characters I've read who becomes worse due to admitting his vulnerabilities. The first novel has him go through a kind of hero's journey, traveling into the Vorrh as part of the novel's twisted take on the quest narrative. He nearly dies, decides to integrate into human society, returns, and settles down having been seemingly humbled. This book takes that and shows that everything he went through if anything has now made him worse. These traits of his, his misanthropy and feelings of superiority, don't just go away. And the fact that people have seen him humbled only worsens his behavior and resentment toward them.
His journey back into the Vorrh in the last half of the novel is also a highlight. The horrifying experiences of the mercenary group sent into the forest to retrieve the lost group of slaves and Ishmael's scheming were one of the parts of the book that were as tense and gripping as the first book.
There's also a new character named Hector Schumann, a German professor who gets pressed out of retirement by an ascendant Reich and becomes entangled in an investigation in England about the origin and possible uses of titular Erstwhile, who have begun to awaken across the world. A man of Jewish heritage, Schumann has to deal with his relationship with both Germany and the Reich as the investigation goes on.
And of course, that brings us to The Erstwhile themselves, forgotten, not fallen, angels, who because of their failure to prevent the biblical Fall were left abandoned on Earth. You could say that they're some of the biggest victims in the book, filled with such self-loathing that they auto-interr themselves. Seeking relief and substance, they have become twisted things of matter.
A lot of these ideas are interesting, but I don't feel that they get fully fleshed out in the book. Most of the events are summarized rather than explored, and I would say that a lot of the book feels like an extended epilogue to the first book, or a prologue to the third, rather than a full book in its own right.
Sadly, the book also mostly drops the short vignettes and side narratives of the first novel, but luckily we still get the detailed and darkly absurd history of the creation of Adam Longfellar, the world's most elaborate sculpture/guillotine. Catling is incredible at writing these little short narratives in his books, and again I wish he had a book of short stories published.
To conclude, the book is uneven, and I didn't find it as well-written or as memorable as the first one. The book seemed mainly concerned with answering questions posed by the first book, and while the answers range from unnecessary to interesting, the book doesn't really have enough going on to justify itself. But reading it I blew through dozens of pages at a time, and I never thought it insulted or ruined my enjoyment of the first book. Overall it mostly just felt unnecessary. However I'm still going to see it through and read the third book, hopefully it's a return to form and closer in style to the first one rather than this one.