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The Vorrh: Book One in the Vorrh Trilogy Kindle Edition

by Brian Catling (Author) Format: Kindle Edition
4.0 4.0 out of 5 stars 1,070 ratings
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  1. Book 1 of 3
    The Vorrh Trilogy
  2. Print length
    514 pages
  3. Language
    English
  4. Publisher
    Coronet
  5. Publication date
    21 May 2015
  6. File size
    863 KB
  7. Page Flip
    Enabled
  8. Word Wise
    Enabled
  9. Enhanced typesetting
    Enabled
  10. See all details
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There are 3 books in this series.
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Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ B00N9AVF6Q
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Coronet; Reprint edition (21 May 2015)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • File size ‏ : ‎ 863 KB
  • Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
  • Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
  • Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 514 pages
  • Customer reviews:
    4.0 4.0 out of 5 stars 1,070 ratings

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B. Catling

B. Catling

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Customer reviews

4 out of 5 stars
1,070 global ratings

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Customers say

Customers find the book enjoyable and well-written. They appreciate the interesting characters and vivid language. However, opinions differ on the story quality, language style, and evocativeness. Some find the narrative fascinating and intriguing, while others feel it lacks depth or is overblown.

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ReadabilityCharacter developmentBeautyDepthGripStory qualityLanguage qualityEvocativeness
28 customers mention ‘Readability’28 positive0 negative

Customers enjoyed the book. They found it engaging and described it as a good holiday read with great passages. The story was described as sublime and compelling once they got into it. Readers appreciated the rich imagination and sci-fi elements.

"...Again, it is simply 'The Vorrh'. I enjoyed the book greatly, from the richness of the language to the idiosyncrasies of the alternate..." Read more

"...It’s a work of rich, perhaps over-rich, imagination, often reading like a version of ‘Locus Solus’, Roussel’s ignored novel about an inventor’s..." Read more

"I'm not going to say this is the best book I've read in a long time, even though it is...." Read more

"...His character points of view ricochet all over the place, but the result is splendid...." Read more

12 customers mention ‘Character development’9 positive3 negative

Customers enjoy the character development. They find the characters interesting, with a mix of fantastical and historical elements.

"...The setting, the blurring between fantasy and reality, the characters, but most of all writing, make this a hugely compelling novel...." Read more

"...The characters are varied and believable in a way that doesn't come across as Catling boasting his literary chops..." Read more

"...forest that no-one can quite remember crossing... Characters are believably flawed - products of their upbringing and environment - and even the..." Read more

"...This is a very well written book, with interesting characters, ideas and mood...." Read more

4 customers mention ‘Beauty’4 positive0 negative

Customers enjoy the languid and dreamy language.

"...Still, there is beauty in abundance here and enough to suggest that there will be resolution and the coming together of the scattered character arcs..." Read more

"...Catling somehow manages to turn ‘overwriting’ into a fine art. His character points of view ricochet all over the place, but the result is splendid...." Read more

"...The language is languid and dreamily gorgeous - if you're in a hurry to get to the point, you won't like it - but ideally suited to describing a..." Read more

"...A beautiful epic, not for the faint-hearted, but a joy for the lovers of fantasy. Highly recommended." Read more

3 customers mention ‘Depth’3 positive0 negative

Customers find the book engaging. They say it draws them in with its storylines.

"...imagination, a beautifully crafted vortex of storylines that suck you into its pages like a journey into its eponymous forest, leaving memories of..." Read more

"Just brilliant, utterly submerged in the book, wanting more. The trilogy delivers on so many levels" Read more

"Deep & Moving..." Read more

3 customers mention ‘Grip’3 positive0 negative

Customers find the book gripping and engaging. They say it doesn't hold back.

"...It does not hold back. The violence is violent, the sex is sexual and the magic is truly mystical. Nothing here feels like it has been done before...." Read more

"Really good sci fi book that keeps you gripped. The great reviews are well founded" Read more

"Excellent book, gripping, strange, couldn't put it down." Read more

47 customers mention ‘Story quality’31 positive16 negative

Customers have mixed reviews about the story. Some find the narrative interesting and engaging with its surreal locations and original events. Others feel the story lacks consistency and is unsatisfying, with weak links to the main plot. The ending can be confusing and frustrating for some readers.

"...And still, it transcends these genres as well. It is simply 'The Vorrh' and is a much better book because of that...." Read more

"...It’s a work of rich, perhaps over-rich, imagination, often reading like a version of ‘Locus Solus’, Roussel’s ignored novel about an inventor’s..." Read more

"...Nothing here feels like it has been done before. Some of the events are so original that you will gasp...." Read more

"...It’s alternative history, and the whole thing is weird and wonderful. The writing style is unique...." Read more

36 customers mention ‘Language quality’23 positive13 negative

Customers have different views on the language quality of the book. Some find it poetic and vivid, while others find it dense and overly literary. The prose is described as lyrical and intelligently written. However, some readers feel the language is too descriptive and pretentious.

"...I enjoyed the book greatly, from the richness of the language to the idiosyncrasies of the alternate world that had been created...." Read more

"...can flow in a way that may sound beautiful and will certainly appeal to the poets and those who love to hear language more for it's rhythm and sound..." Read more

"...Not, by any means, in a bad way; but some artistic conceits shine through - an obsession with light and eyes, the totemic items of the..." Read more

"...The narratives and themes don’t cohere. The adjective-heavy writing can be wonderfully expressive but too often degenerates into verbose, ‘poetic’..." Read more

13 customers mention ‘Evocativeness’7 positive6 negative

Customers have different views on the book's evocativeness. Some find it descriptive and imaginative, with an obvious visual theme throughout the novel. They appreciate the buildup of mythology and symbolism in the book, blending Christian themes. Others feel it seems more profound than it actually is, overblown, and full of woolly mysticism. The language can be described as poetic or verbose, and some readers find it confusing and frustrating in its attempt to convey feeling and emotion.

"...There is an obvious visual theme throughout the novel with a cyclops playing a major part, a real-life 19th century photographer taking up a number..." Read more

"...I will say this: 'The Vorrh' is sublime. It is evocative, the language is beautiful with inventive phrasing and whole paragraphs that just sing at..." Read more

"...be wonderfully expressive but too often degenerates into verbose, ‘poetic’ guff: ‘the rawness of both expressions bound them together in a shame..." Read more

"...it blurs the line between fiction and truth, and between the deeply symbolic and the startlingly real, with an ease that feels less like "fantasy"..." Read more

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Top reviews from United Kingdom

  • Sam Leeves
    5.0 out of 5 stars The Wonders of the Vorrh
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 27 December 2012
    Verified Purchase
    Every so often, a book comes along that defies genre. 'No Country for Old Men' is more than a thriller or a western. 'The Big Sleep' is more than a crime novel. And what exactly is 'The Catcher in the Rye'? Brian Catling's masterful 'The Vorrh' is another such book. This is not just another Fantasy. There are remnants of the Western in there, Adventure, Crime, Romance. And still, it transcends these genres as well. It is simply 'The Vorrh' and is a much better book because of that.

    Of course, due to the supernatural themes and the slight eccentricities of some of the characters, it will inevitably go down as a Fantasy novel. This isn't entirely wrong, nor is it a black mark against the book, indeed, it's a genre that hold some weight. 'The Vorrh' is, however, a new breed of Fantasy. Catling creates a world of wonder and imbues it with Cormac McCarthy-esque violence and a tension that is entirely it's own. Again, it is simply 'The Vorrh'.

    I enjoyed the book greatly, from the richness of the language to the idiosyncrasies of the alternate world that had been created. There were times I feared that there were a few too many characters, but, as I read on, I realised just how necessary they all were. There were a few characters I would have liked to have seen slightly more of, but, again I soon realised, that that would have ruined the mystery surrounding them.

    Put simply, 'The Vorrh' is a book that is hard to define owing mainly to its stark originality. If you're looking for a book where the language is rich and the storytelling is masterful, look no further. And, in this world where there are a few too many shades of grey, who isn't looking for that?
    18 people found this helpful
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  • Tommo32
    4.0 out of 5 stars Unusual, Grandiose and Fascinating
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 31 October 2016
    Verified Purchase
    A few general points to start with:

    1. This is the first book in a trilogy, so if you have made it to the end and wonder why there are a number of loose ends do not despair, there is more to come.
    2. At 500 pages it's not exactly a light read, especially as the next 2 instalments are likely to be a similar length
    3. It really is not a book for everyone, but you will be able to tell that from the mixed reviews on here anyway.

    So, this is what happens when an artist sets out to write a fantasy trilogy. Essentially it becomes more about the landscape, in this case a huge, largely impenetrable forest that appears to be sentient and is certainly a character in it's own right. It draws people in and wipes them clean of memories, allows civilization to nibble at it's exterior as a trade off to keeping it out of the interior, and houses a plethora of historical or biblical cast-offs and forgotten individuals. It is bizarre and other-worldly in short, but forms the centre of the novel while the human, or nearly-human, elements roam around on the outskirts and sometimes venture into the Vorrh, but rarely to their benefit.

    There is an obvious visual theme throughout the novel with a cyclops playing a major part, a real-life 19th century photographer taking up a number of chapters, and this novel is certainly more about the visual elements of the world that the author has envisaged than it is about an obvious, driving, plot. The language is heavy with adjectives, flowery at times, stunningly visual and evocative at others, and the multiple strands of this story, following a whole host of strange characters in various parts of the world doing unconnected tasks, appear at times to be excuses for elaborate visual descriptions. You will at many times question where it is all heading - the obvious answer is towards the Vorrh, which appears to have it's own gravitational pull on people and things - and the lack of coherent plot-arc and definite purpose can be off-putting.

    Essentially, if you think that the likes of Will Self and Cormac McCarthy use too many long words, or pointlessly elaborate phrases, prepare to dislike this novel. It has lines in every single chapter that are unnecessarily ostentatious, but at the same time these lines can flow in a way that may sound beautiful and will certainly appeal to the poets and those who love to hear language more for it's rhythm and sound than it's logical content. Sentences can confuse, contradict and frustrate in their attempt to convey feeling and emotion, and to read 500 pages of this may in fact be to understand the pull of the physical Vorrh itself - you either get captured in the bewildering narrative and stumble towards the centre, or run away to safety.

    I made it to the end, of this first instalment, and don't regret the journey, but there were a number of times where I re-read a passage that hadn't sunk in the first time and still wasn't sure if what I had just read made any sense. Still, there is beauty in abundance here and enough to suggest that there will be resolution and the coming together of the scattered character arcs as the Vorrh gathers in it's captive minds in the next two books.
    8 people found this helpful
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  • lavozdelapenumbra
    3.0 out of 5 stars Can't see the wood for the trees
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 11 July 2015
    Verified Purchase
    It’s the early twentieth century. Essenwald, a European city, has been imported piece by piece to ‘the Dark Continent’ and reassembled on the edge of the Vorrh, a limitless, memory-sucking, sentient forest.

    Brian Catling’s 500-page novel takes us inside the city and the forest via various sets of characters: the real-life surrealist poet Raymond Roussel; a flighty young woman called Ghertrude Eloise Tulp; a Cyclops raised in a cellar by robots made of Bakelite; an army officer named Williams who carries a bow made of human flesh and who is on some kind of mystical journey; Tsungali, an assassin hunting Williams. A semi-imagined life story of the photographer Edward Muybridge is also chopped up and thrown into the narrative soup.

    It’s a work of rich, perhaps over-rich, imagination, often reading like a version of ‘Locus Solus’, Roussel’s ignored novel about an inventor’s country estate and his bizarre machines. There are a huge number of fascinating ideas running through it; unsurprisingly, given Catling’s main vocation as an artist, sight and perception are the dominant leitmotifs.

    It’s not much of a novel, to be honest. Too many of its mysteries are never explained. The narratives and themes don’t cohere. The adjective-heavy writing can be wonderfully expressive but too often degenerates into verbose, ‘poetic’ guff: ‘the rawness of both expressions bound them together in a shame that was sublime in the depth of its contradiction’; ‘coldness plucked at her optic nerves with a bony nail’; ‘the smell of their fresh, laundered brilliance painted the inside of his mind with perfectly chilled milk’; ‘his left shoe finally gave up the ghost and sprang from his foot with a flourish of something like embarrassment’; ‘hushed lymphatics like quiet ivy alongside the speeding juice of now.’ In a work about seeing, meaning is often obscured or unfocused; we stop believing (and, therefore, caring) about the world that Catling creates because it’s not rendered clearly to us.
    31 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

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  • Luis Cardoso
    5.0 out of 5 stars História intrincada.
    Reviewed in Spain on 20 December 2022
    Verified Purchase
    Excelente escrita, apesar de densa. Será, concerteza, a próxima grande adaptação de uma obra literária à TV. Terry Gilliam fala enormidades destes livros. O Lore e o mundo por detrás disto é fantástico.
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  • Paulous
    5.0 out of 5 stars The Vorrh Trilogy
    Reviewed in Canada on 18 March 2019
    Verified Purchase
    I ordered Brian Catling's The Vorrh trilogy on Wednesday and received it on Friday. Absolutely recommend Amazon Prime. Great service all round.
    As for Brian Catling's writing; I've been entranced by his poetic mastery since reading the first sentence of The Vorrh. Catling is one of those writers I occasionally enjoy reading aloud just for the sheer pleasure of hearing the potent musicality of his work. The rhythmic cadence of sentences rich with metaphorical imagery leads the reader on an intoxicating, mysterious odyssey whose ending is, after a thousand pages, as yet tantalizingly unresolved. One of those literary journeys one wishes would never end.
    One person found this helpful
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  • M.D. Kuehn
    5.0 out of 5 stars THE VORRH stands alone in my memory of fantasy novels.
    Reviewed in the United States on 10 July 2015
    Verified Purchase
    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.
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  • Jake Williams
    4.0 out of 5 stars A preposterous fantasy that kept me reading. Catting writes ...
    Reviewed in the United States on 12 February 2018
    Verified Purchase
    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.
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  • Amazon Customer
    4.0 out of 5 stars Four Stars
    Reviewed in Canada on 22 September 2015
    Verified Purchase
    A bit all over the place, but somehow remarkably entrancing
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