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The Vorrh Trilogy #3
The Cloven
In the tradition of China Miéville, Michael Moorcock and Alasdair Gray, B. Catling's The Vorrh is literary dark fantasy which wilfully ignores boundaries, crossing over into surrealism, magic-realism, horror and steampunk.
The Cloven is the final book in the Vorrh trilogy.
429 pages, Paperback
Published May 16, 2019
53 people are currently reading
1840 people want to read
About the author
Brian Catling
27 books350 followersAlso publishes as B. Catling.
Brian Catling was born in London in 1948. He was a poet, sculptor and performance artist, who made installations and painted egg tempera portraits of imagined Cyclops. He was commissioned to make solo installations and performances in many countries including Spain, Japan, Iceland, Israel, Denmark, Holland, Norway, Germany, Greenland and Australia. He also wrote novels.
He was Professor of Fine Art at The Ruskin School of Drawing & Fine Art, University of Oxford, and a fellow of Linacre College.
Brian Catling was born in London in 1948. He was a poet, sculptor and performance artist, who made installations and painted egg tempera portraits of imagined Cyclops. He was commissioned to make solo installations and performances in many countries including Spain, Japan, Iceland, Israel, Denmark, Holland, Norway, Germany, Greenland and Australia. He also wrote novels.
He was Professor of Fine Art at The Ruskin School of Drawing & Fine Art, University of Oxford, and a fellow of Linacre College.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 128 reviews
July 24, 2018
Brian Catling burst onto the scene of fantasy and new weird literature with a debut novel, The Vorrh (2012), despite being in his late 60s. Catling has been a visual artist for years, but with the invention of the laptop (which helped his dyslexia) he finally started writing, to great success. His series received great acclaim from luminaries such as Terry Gilliam, Michael Moorcock and Alan Moore calling it “the new century’s first landmark work of fantasy.” Yet, it remains far removed from popular consciousness and epic fantasy such as Brandon Sanderson’s and sits closer to the New Weird of Jeff Vandermeer.
His trilogy revolves around an ancient forest in Africa named the Vorrh, which hosts strange beasts and people tend to lose their memories when they enter. It is the world’s oldest forest and it is said that everything on the planet ultimately originated in the Vorrh. The Garden of Eden is said to exist somewhere deep inside of it. In a sense the premise sounds similar to Robert Holdstock’s Mythago Wood (1984), which the difference that the Vorrh exists in colonal Africa with the European colonial town Essenwald exploiting the forest next to it. A heady mix of Biblical and African mythology is thrown over the story.
It is the eve of the second world war, and the Vorrh is finally waking up. More precisely, in the second novel The Erstwhile (2017), the guardians of the garden of Eden are crawling out of the ground. Not only in the Vorrh but all around the world. The German professor Schumann visited the reawakened creatures in a mental hospital in London. Meanwhile, some demonic child is growing up in Africa as a harbinger of one thing or another, and Ishmael Williams, a former cyclops, leads an army into the Vorrh to retrieve a zombie workforce. Lots more happened; executions and abductions. The second novel remained filled with enigmas and creepiness. Mysterious supernatural forces were at work. Let’s see whether The Cloven has any answers for us…
This final novel starts out just as creepy and gross as the earlier ones. There are elements of shamanistic or voodoo body horror that turn every instance of the supernatural into something terrifying and fundamentally wrong on a gut level. Fantasy authors often tend to deal with magic in such a casual way that magic becomes tropified. Catling’s approach of the supernatural as weird and creepy packs a much greater punch. It carries a deeper power and significance, it casts human nature as a fragile thing.
The type of magic that Catling describes is a curious mixture of bodily transformations as in Ovid's Metamorphoses or David Lindsay's A Voyage to Arcturus, combined with Biblical elements and prophecies and finally a mystical connection to nature, to the forest, the water and the soil of the Vorrh. The effect is a kind of magic that has directly to do with the nature of humanity and our place in nature and the universe. Thinking about other fantasy novels, magic is so often depicted as just a tool, a stand-in for technology, or something that stands outside human nature, but Catling's vision speaks of greater mystery. Those who interact with the Vorrh will have to adapt to it.
And if that isn’t enough, Catling is also a stunningly good writer with a talent for visual description and finding nuance in mood and emotion. His writing has become more controlled over the series too. The first novel was like an explosion, an uncontrolled burst of creativity that needed an outlet, producing the strangest analogies and trippiest visuals. It was the kind of book that would describe a gun or a motorbike as an organism with organs of wood and steel. It also made the story very hard to follow. In The Cloven, the striking ideas are still there, but the writing has become more accessible and not as focused on details.
By this time in the series, the character points of view have multiplied a bit too much, and The Cloven's first duty is to gather all the loose story strands and reiterate some motivations. The Erstwhile had felt too much like a middle book with its many strands and its proliferation of confusion. Near the end I was quite lost and wondered if Catling's story even had a plot to follow. The Cloven starts tying things together, to great relief. It's the kind of story where the destinies of characters remain unknown until the end when they are fulfilled. It’s one of those “the journey is greater than the destination” kind of novels, and The Cloven ends in small, intimate moments instead of epic ones. In this sense, the trilogy echoes the mysteries of Jeff Vandermeer's Southern Reach series, but Catling's is a richer tale with more to say.
Now we can look back at the entire trilogy. The Vorrh trilogy is indeed fascinating to read and a stunning, highly original addition to fantasy as a whole. Where The Erstwhile left me a bit confused, The Cloven has convinced me that this series is a masterwork.
So much of this trilogy can be appreciated. Brian Catling is an original and brims with a passion for creating his vision. He clearly loves storytelling; it is to be felt in the way he enters chapters, builds up tension and explores emotions. He loves the creepier, unsettling side of the imagination and has the skill to communicate all the nuances. Finally, the themes he chose to pick up, the times and locations he situated his stories in and the historical characters he chose to involve all bring a freshness to the genre of fantasy in which worldbuilding too often seems to be done on autopilot. Catling must have a very diverse interest in traveling, cultures and art history and a lifetime of exploring themes in art to tie all of it together in a story.
I doubt Catling will ever gain a large audience. His work is too much nestled in a niche, but highly satisfying for those to agree with his tastes. Please let him become a new John Crowley and once in a while produce a fascinating, mature work of fantasy.
His trilogy revolves around an ancient forest in Africa named the Vorrh, which hosts strange beasts and people tend to lose their memories when they enter. It is the world’s oldest forest and it is said that everything on the planet ultimately originated in the Vorrh. The Garden of Eden is said to exist somewhere deep inside of it. In a sense the premise sounds similar to Robert Holdstock’s Mythago Wood (1984), which the difference that the Vorrh exists in colonal Africa with the European colonial town Essenwald exploiting the forest next to it. A heady mix of Biblical and African mythology is thrown over the story.
It is the eve of the second world war, and the Vorrh is finally waking up. More precisely, in the second novel The Erstwhile (2017), the guardians of the garden of Eden are crawling out of the ground. Not only in the Vorrh but all around the world. The German professor Schumann visited the reawakened creatures in a mental hospital in London. Meanwhile, some demonic child is growing up in Africa as a harbinger of one thing or another, and Ishmael Williams, a former cyclops, leads an army into the Vorrh to retrieve a zombie workforce. Lots more happened; executions and abductions. The second novel remained filled with enigmas and creepiness. Mysterious supernatural forces were at work. Let’s see whether The Cloven has any answers for us…
This final novel starts out just as creepy and gross as the earlier ones. There are elements of shamanistic or voodoo body horror that turn every instance of the supernatural into something terrifying and fundamentally wrong on a gut level. Fantasy authors often tend to deal with magic in such a casual way that magic becomes tropified. Catling’s approach of the supernatural as weird and creepy packs a much greater punch. It carries a deeper power and significance, it casts human nature as a fragile thing.
The type of magic that Catling describes is a curious mixture of bodily transformations as in Ovid's Metamorphoses or David Lindsay's A Voyage to Arcturus, combined with Biblical elements and prophecies and finally a mystical connection to nature, to the forest, the water and the soil of the Vorrh. The effect is a kind of magic that has directly to do with the nature of humanity and our place in nature and the universe. Thinking about other fantasy novels, magic is so often depicted as just a tool, a stand-in for technology, or something that stands outside human nature, but Catling's vision speaks of greater mystery. Those who interact with the Vorrh will have to adapt to it.
And if that isn’t enough, Catling is also a stunningly good writer with a talent for visual description and finding nuance in mood and emotion. His writing has become more controlled over the series too. The first novel was like an explosion, an uncontrolled burst of creativity that needed an outlet, producing the strangest analogies and trippiest visuals. It was the kind of book that would describe a gun or a motorbike as an organism with organs of wood and steel. It also made the story very hard to follow. In The Cloven, the striking ideas are still there, but the writing has become more accessible and not as focused on details.
By this time in the series, the character points of view have multiplied a bit too much, and The Cloven's first duty is to gather all the loose story strands and reiterate some motivations. The Erstwhile had felt too much like a middle book with its many strands and its proliferation of confusion. Near the end I was quite lost and wondered if Catling's story even had a plot to follow. The Cloven starts tying things together, to great relief. It's the kind of story where the destinies of characters remain unknown until the end when they are fulfilled. It’s one of those “the journey is greater than the destination” kind of novels, and The Cloven ends in small, intimate moments instead of epic ones. In this sense, the trilogy echoes the mysteries of Jeff Vandermeer's Southern Reach series, but Catling's is a richer tale with more to say.
Now we can look back at the entire trilogy. The Vorrh trilogy is indeed fascinating to read and a stunning, highly original addition to fantasy as a whole. Where The Erstwhile left me a bit confused, The Cloven has convinced me that this series is a masterwork.
So much of this trilogy can be appreciated. Brian Catling is an original and brims with a passion for creating his vision. He clearly loves storytelling; it is to be felt in the way he enters chapters, builds up tension and explores emotions. He loves the creepier, unsettling side of the imagination and has the skill to communicate all the nuances. Finally, the themes he chose to pick up, the times and locations he situated his stories in and the historical characters he chose to involve all bring a freshness to the genre of fantasy in which worldbuilding too often seems to be done on autopilot. Catling must have a very diverse interest in traveling, cultures and art history and a lifetime of exploring themes in art to tie all of it together in a story.
I doubt Catling will ever gain a large audience. His work is too much nestled in a niche, but highly satisfying for those to agree with his tastes. Please let him become a new John Crowley and once in a while produce a fascinating, mature work of fantasy.
July 16, 2018
I don’t even know how to explain this book/series of books. They are the weirdest pieces of literature I’ve ever read and will be reading them again in the near future. 10/10
July 30, 2018
Simply astonishing. I have no idea how to write a review of this book or trilogy any more than I've been successful in explaining them to the many people I've recommended them to. Come back to me in a few years, and maybe I'll have come up with something. It's dark fantasy, an engagement with colonialism, an expression of the psychic shock of the horrors of the 20th Century, a love letter to William Blake, a horror story, a tribute to some forgotten historical figures, truly very very weird, a meditation on the human condition, a meditation on the ecological condition, a rewriting and reversing of the book of Genesis, and who knows what else. (It also has inexplicable Bakelite robots and an angel called Nicholas Parsons.)
And yet the trilogy is extremely readable, and especially so in this final volume. Although Catling is dealing with a great number of complex themes, he doesn't allow the reader to feel lost or stupid. The skill in which he gradually brings so many different characters, most in truly extraordinary situations, together at the end of what has been an epic journey is truly impressive, and all the more so because it doesn't offer any easy answers without leaving the reader feeling cheated. All this within prose that contains some of the most beautiful passages I have ever read - the explanations of what blindness is like in the language of sight are particularly memorable.
The biggest compliment I can offer a book is that when it's finished, I struggle to move on to the next on my 'to read' pile simply because the number of thoughts I have to work through is too great. This is such a book, and also one that I think along with the rest of the trilogy will reward rereading. The Vorrh is the kind of work that will put many off due to sheer and utter weirdness, but those of us who make the leap will always be glad that we did.
And yet the trilogy is extremely readable, and especially so in this final volume. Although Catling is dealing with a great number of complex themes, he doesn't allow the reader to feel lost or stupid. The skill in which he gradually brings so many different characters, most in truly extraordinary situations, together at the end of what has been an epic journey is truly impressive, and all the more so because it doesn't offer any easy answers without leaving the reader feeling cheated. All this within prose that contains some of the most beautiful passages I have ever read - the explanations of what blindness is like in the language of sight are particularly memorable.
The biggest compliment I can offer a book is that when it's finished, I struggle to move on to the next on my 'to read' pile simply because the number of thoughts I have to work through is too great. This is such a book, and also one that I think along with the rest of the trilogy will reward rereading. The Vorrh is the kind of work that will put many off due to sheer and utter weirdness, but those of us who make the leap will always be glad that we did.
April 5, 2021
Hoo boy. Where do I even start?!
I have proselytized this series to anyone who will listen for YEARS (lol sorry, friends). The first two books in the trilogy fully blew my mind, and I'm not sure anything has ever compared. I bought book three the moment it released.....but then it sat in my "to-read" pile for actual *years* because I loved the trilogy so desperately that having it end was something I wound up dreading.
So I procrastinated it.
Then, over the last week or so, I re-read the first two books and set my mind to actually finishing the third book and thus the series.
And let me tell you. Book three did not disappoint.
I've said it before and I'll say it again: the brain that bore his trilogy is an absolute GENIUS.
The writing is superb. Vivid. Outlandishly imaginative. Smart as all hell. Catling's use of language is so brilliant that more than once I found myself googling a word to make sure it meant what I thought it meant (case in point: at one point he refers to man's imagination as "stenotic" and I was like DAMN. That is the PERFECT word for that passage but one I would have never considered for it). On top of his genius use of the English language, Catling utilizes words in Yiddish and old Hebrew that add so much extra depth to the text. I'm not joking when I say I googled a TON while reading these books and my poor little brain still felt like there was so much more to investigate and digest.
I also found it absolutely captivating how Catling took real characters from history and meaningfully incorporated them into the storyline of the Vorrh. Artists, writers, and naturalists (of course, three of my favorite things) all feature. They are written true to how history remembers them, but with added details that become relevant to the plot.
I could honestly go on an on about what I loved in this series. (Where's my soapbox?) I loved that this is clearly inspired by West Africa's tales of the sasabonsam. I loved the immensely creative (and dark AF) twists to the Old Testament and biblical history. I loved the obvious research that was done on arboreal ecology and transpiration. I was captivated by the deeply flawed and often unlovable but absolutely fascinating characters. I was left open mouth stunned and impressed by the concept of the Limboia, of fleyber, by Meta, by Nebsuel, by the Williamses and Marais and Lutchen and Ishmael and the Erstwhile. I ate up the vivid details of African geography and folk history. I heavily applaud the strong message of how vile white (and hominid) supremacism is. I STAN the impeccable and layered detail paid to all things.
Not once did I predict what would happen next, which earns this series SO many stars, and I greatly appreciated that Catling didn't just wrap everything up in a neat little bow at the finale. There is enough closure for me to not feel like I was left hanging, but I finished with so many more questions
and
spoiler alert
.
.
the nihilist in me LOVED the way it panned out in favor of the forest and earth over human kind. Like, YES! Humans are a scourge that went rogue. Wipe 'em out.
Loved. It.
.
.
With all that being said, these books are very dark and VERY effed up (hence why I love them). Sex, violence, disfigurement, demonic possession, you name it. If you're sensitive to such things, you may not appreciate this series.
This trilogy is one of the most genius works I've ever had the honor of putting into my brain, however, and I could not recommend it more highly.
I have proselytized this series to anyone who will listen for YEARS (lol sorry, friends). The first two books in the trilogy fully blew my mind, and I'm not sure anything has ever compared. I bought book three the moment it released.....but then it sat in my "to-read" pile for actual *years* because I loved the trilogy so desperately that having it end was something I wound up dreading.
So I procrastinated it.
Then, over the last week or so, I re-read the first two books and set my mind to actually finishing the third book and thus the series.
And let me tell you. Book three did not disappoint.
I've said it before and I'll say it again: the brain that bore his trilogy is an absolute GENIUS.
The writing is superb. Vivid. Outlandishly imaginative. Smart as all hell. Catling's use of language is so brilliant that more than once I found myself googling a word to make sure it meant what I thought it meant (case in point: at one point he refers to man's imagination as "stenotic" and I was like DAMN. That is the PERFECT word for that passage but one I would have never considered for it). On top of his genius use of the English language, Catling utilizes words in Yiddish and old Hebrew that add so much extra depth to the text. I'm not joking when I say I googled a TON while reading these books and my poor little brain still felt like there was so much more to investigate and digest.
I also found it absolutely captivating how Catling took real characters from history and meaningfully incorporated them into the storyline of the Vorrh. Artists, writers, and naturalists (of course, three of my favorite things) all feature. They are written true to how history remembers them, but with added details that become relevant to the plot.
I could honestly go on an on about what I loved in this series. (Where's my soapbox?) I loved that this is clearly inspired by West Africa's tales of the sasabonsam. I loved the immensely creative (and dark AF) twists to the Old Testament and biblical history. I loved the obvious research that was done on arboreal ecology and transpiration. I was captivated by the deeply flawed and often unlovable but absolutely fascinating characters. I was left open mouth stunned and impressed by the concept of the Limboia, of fleyber, by Meta, by Nebsuel, by the Williamses and Marais and Lutchen and Ishmael and the Erstwhile. I ate up the vivid details of African geography and folk history. I heavily applaud the strong message of how vile white (and hominid) supremacism is. I STAN the impeccable and layered detail paid to all things.
Not once did I predict what would happen next, which earns this series SO many stars, and I greatly appreciated that Catling didn't just wrap everything up in a neat little bow at the finale. There is enough closure for me to not feel like I was left hanging, but I finished with so many more questions
and
spoiler alert
.
.
the nihilist in me LOVED the way it panned out in favor of the forest and earth over human kind. Like, YES! Humans are a scourge that went rogue. Wipe 'em out.
Loved. It.
.
.
With all that being said, these books are very dark and VERY effed up (hence why I love them). Sex, violence, disfigurement, demonic possession, you name it. If you're sensitive to such things, you may not appreciate this series.
This trilogy is one of the most genius works I've ever had the honor of putting into my brain, however, and I could not recommend it more highly.
October 18, 2020
This book series as a whole is really difficult to form an opinion on - one the one hand, it has some of the most luscious, vibrant language I’ve ever read, and on the other it is an endlessly frustrating slog.
There’s still a part of me which wonders if I’m just too stupid to ‘get’ these books, and ‘The Cloven’ is no different. It’s a weird hodgepodge of Judeo-Christian myth and sci-fi, and one that doesn’t provide easy answers to its questions. The problem is that the story is just badly told - plot threads are abandoned, characters are uneven and change their personalities between paragraphs, and huge chunks of exposition are required to give us details that Catling couldn’t organically weave into his narrative. This is a masterclass of how not to plan a trilogy, to the point that huge, pivotal aspects of the world which we needed to know about way in advance are explained mere pages before they change the fabric of the world, most likely because Catling realised he hadn’t done the groundwork to set them up. I’ve seen so many people defending these aspects with claims that his work ‘defies literary conception’ or ‘has moved beyond narrative altogether ’, but I don’t buy it - bad plotting is bad plotting, and should be treated as such.
It’s treatment of women and people of colour is also deeply uncomfortable, even if detractors will say it is ‘satire’ or that it ‘subverts tropes’ - it isn’t subversive to just do the same thing people have been doing for years, but this time with a wry wink. Women are beaten, tortured, raped (with this rape often portrayed as profound and romantic), and their problems are always, every time, solved by men. The extent to which this is true is made hilariously clear when a major character dies, and his lover, another major character, is so incapable of having a personality of her own that she immediately remembers another man she once loved, who Catling has never mentioned before, and starts to form her personality around him. Within a page. People of colour are likewise portrayed as ‘exotic’ and having ‘the wisdom of nature’ which is just a whole heap of patronising. Oh, and two separate messiah figures to two separate tribes of black peoples are white men - one of whom turns black when he is ‘enlightened’.
This series has been hailed as a total reinvention of the fantasy genre, and unfortunately I just don’t think that’s true. At the end of the day, this series does all the things it claims to subvert - it just does so with a nicer hat.
There’s still a part of me which wonders if I’m just too stupid to ‘get’ these books, and ‘The Cloven’ is no different. It’s a weird hodgepodge of Judeo-Christian myth and sci-fi, and one that doesn’t provide easy answers to its questions. The problem is that the story is just badly told - plot threads are abandoned, characters are uneven and change their personalities between paragraphs, and huge chunks of exposition are required to give us details that Catling couldn’t organically weave into his narrative. This is a masterclass of how not to plan a trilogy, to the point that huge, pivotal aspects of the world which we needed to know about way in advance are explained mere pages before they change the fabric of the world, most likely because Catling realised he hadn’t done the groundwork to set them up. I’ve seen so many people defending these aspects with claims that his work ‘defies literary conception’ or ‘has moved beyond narrative altogether ’, but I don’t buy it - bad plotting is bad plotting, and should be treated as such.
It’s treatment of women and people of colour is also deeply uncomfortable, even if detractors will say it is ‘satire’ or that it ‘subverts tropes’ - it isn’t subversive to just do the same thing people have been doing for years, but this time with a wry wink. Women are beaten, tortured, raped (with this rape often portrayed as profound and romantic), and their problems are always, every time, solved by men. The extent to which this is true is made hilariously clear when a major character dies, and his lover, another major character, is so incapable of having a personality of her own that she immediately remembers another man she once loved, who Catling has never mentioned before, and starts to form her personality around him. Within a page. People of colour are likewise portrayed as ‘exotic’ and having ‘the wisdom of nature’ which is just a whole heap of patronising. Oh, and two separate messiah figures to two separate tribes of black peoples are white men - one of whom turns black when he is ‘enlightened’.
This series has been hailed as a total reinvention of the fantasy genre, and unfortunately I just don’t think that’s true. At the end of the day, this series does all the things it claims to subvert - it just does so with a nicer hat.
July 22, 2018
What a glorious conclusion to this baffling trilogy. Catling’s surreal, nightmarish fantasy is brought to a stunning and shocking close in rapturous fashion. The Cloven moves more quickly than its predecessors, but Catling keeps his poet’s eye firmly affixed on the path, pulling the reader deeper and deeper into his dark and wondrous world of strangeness. The Cloven never does what you expect, but then again, no part of this trilogy ever did. Fans of the first two books will be delighted. Those who chose to wait until the trilogy was complete to start have a fantastic journey ahead of them. I will be reading them all again and again, trying to pierce the heart of darkness that underscores this tale.
September 11, 2019
We’re told at the beginning of The Vorrh that the great, dark forest of the title has a powerful effect on any human who ventures into it. At the extreme, the forest consumes consciousness, turning once-ordinary people into the soul-less Limboia. Our first hero, Williams – so much a protagonist that he actually narrates in the first person for a time – eventually loses his memory and sense of purpose, helped along only by the power of the great bow he’s constructed from his dead, mystical wife. Even those who venture into its edges for brief periods to oversee exploiting its resources can feel their spirits becoming unsettled. They want to get through their work and then flee.
I think that’s ultimately a good metaphor for what it’s like to read this. I can, if I put my mind to it, reconstruct the seven or eight central threads and characters here: the Ghertrude-Syrena-Ishmael triangle, Williams and his quest/murder/reassemblage, the Hector-Nicholas fusing, the Sidrus/Wassidrus unraveling, the lost Modesta, the lost Rowena, the strange background of the Kin, the economics of Essenwald, and the real-world references to Raymond Roussel, Edward Maybridge, and Eugene Marais.
Remembering what I read takes an effort, though, and what comes to mind more readily is the sense that I’ve experienced a bizarre and overwhelming journey. I have not walked through the world that Catling created, but I have been to it. That’s the experience of reading this; you lose a sense of coherence, even a sense of self-as-reader, as you go through the dark and impenetrable jungle.
So, when I say I recommend this, I mean that I recommend this for the ineffable experience of reading it. I can easily see how someone would dislike it for its persistent refusal to follow anything like the implied “rules” of fantasy or even of the novel itself. It breaks all sorts of conventions, and even I – who very much enjoyed it – can’t pretend to make sense of large portions of it.
But it’s that wide refusal to settle for what we expect that makes it so rewarding. Catling fights against the tyranny of a domesticated imagination. There are constant “wild and untamed” passages, elements that don’t quite link to the whole. Read this for its various stories, and maybe even more for some of its magical scenes. Above all, though, read it for the promise that it will take you on a compelling journey that, once it’s finished, will seem as mysterious after the fact as before.
I’ll add simply this: if the first volume of this seems to me a celebration of the feminine, and the second seems masculine, this one seems committed to a kind of hermaphroditism. Throughout we see characters who combine in bodies, from the way Williams is born anew in Sidrus/Wassidrus to the way the writhing bodies of ants function as a composite corpus, to the way those same ants bring about the merging of Ishmael and Modesta and the restoration of the Limboia to something like real life. And, of course, we have the climactic end when Hector joins with Nicholas to give the Erstwhile a chance at something like redemption for his part in the failure to keep Adam and Eve from the Tree of Knowledge.
Confused? Yeah, so am I. But I am also fulfilled. I may venture back into the Vorrh someday, back to a place that will be both familiar and bewildering. For now, in the shadow of the reading adventure, I’m satisfied to have seen the great shapes I’ve read about, and I recommend it to anyone willing to live in such deep uncertainty, anyone willing to resist the conventions that govern so much of what’s out there.
I think that’s ultimately a good metaphor for what it’s like to read this. I can, if I put my mind to it, reconstruct the seven or eight central threads and characters here: the Ghertrude-Syrena-Ishmael triangle, Williams and his quest/murder/reassemblage, the Hector-Nicholas fusing, the Sidrus/Wassidrus unraveling, the lost Modesta, the lost Rowena, the strange background of the Kin, the economics of Essenwald, and the real-world references to Raymond Roussel, Edward Maybridge, and Eugene Marais.
Remembering what I read takes an effort, though, and what comes to mind more readily is the sense that I’ve experienced a bizarre and overwhelming journey. I have not walked through the world that Catling created, but I have been to it. That’s the experience of reading this; you lose a sense of coherence, even a sense of self-as-reader, as you go through the dark and impenetrable jungle.
So, when I say I recommend this, I mean that I recommend this for the ineffable experience of reading it. I can easily see how someone would dislike it for its persistent refusal to follow anything like the implied “rules” of fantasy or even of the novel itself. It breaks all sorts of conventions, and even I – who very much enjoyed it – can’t pretend to make sense of large portions of it.
But it’s that wide refusal to settle for what we expect that makes it so rewarding. Catling fights against the tyranny of a domesticated imagination. There are constant “wild and untamed” passages, elements that don’t quite link to the whole. Read this for its various stories, and maybe even more for some of its magical scenes. Above all, though, read it for the promise that it will take you on a compelling journey that, once it’s finished, will seem as mysterious after the fact as before.
I’ll add simply this: if the first volume of this seems to me a celebration of the feminine, and the second seems masculine, this one seems committed to a kind of hermaphroditism. Throughout we see characters who combine in bodies, from the way Williams is born anew in Sidrus/Wassidrus to the way the writhing bodies of ants function as a composite corpus, to the way those same ants bring about the merging of Ishmael and Modesta and the restoration of the Limboia to something like real life. And, of course, we have the climactic end when Hector joins with Nicholas to give the Erstwhile a chance at something like redemption for his part in the failure to keep Adam and Eve from the Tree of Knowledge.
Confused? Yeah, so am I. But I am also fulfilled. I may venture back into the Vorrh someday, back to a place that will be both familiar and bewildering. For now, in the shadow of the reading adventure, I’m satisfied to have seen the great shapes I’ve read about, and I recommend it to anyone willing to live in such deep uncertainty, anyone willing to resist the conventions that govern so much of what’s out there.
September 23, 2018
I described the Vorrh trilogy to a friend recently as “what would happen if Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Joseph Conrad, and Mary Shelley drank absinthe together all night and agreed to write a fairly steam-punkish fantasy series.” More of an epic prose poem than three novels, the Vorrh trilogy is unlike anything I’ve ever read, and I was sorry to turn the final page of “The Cloven” tonight. Not for the faint of heart (or the squeamish), but if you’re a fan of “out there” fiction I can’t recommend these books enough.
June 7, 2021
Koit koit disappoint
January 8, 2019
We must entertain serious doubts that this is the final volume of a trilogy, as its ultimate "dilemma was immense" (27), lacking "the machinery of the obvious" confronted by several characters (29).
We see that the lost angels of volume 2 believe that "we came to try to understand why you are all so stupid [...] and to protect the tree of knowledge from you" (40-41). These "exist in all time at once" (52), their "temporal disconnection" related to the forest's "predaotry amnesia" (id.)--they believe that humans "are an aberration. They were never meant to be anything more than all the other animals who know their place" (53). Humans "carried evil out of the forest and have evolved its huge spectrum and power. Satan could never have done that" (57). Uncertain at book's end how this is to resolve.
This volume nevertheless ratifies its antecedent regarding the monocular character: "your fine brain is undivided, uncloven and whole" (55). By contrast, perhaps a description of the default condition in how certain others "gather themselves from disposed parts of human personalities, shards of injury or enigma turned spiteful or malicious" (206).
This volume dials up the international conflagration: "We already own four colony states and have control over the mineral wealth of another three. Africa will soon be the storehouse for the Reich's war machine" (67).
We see that trauma is transformative insofar as "painful qualities had solidified into something greater: a nameless strength that had been gifted equally by all those who had loved and abused her" (112). We see also that desire structures perception in "she had 'seen' only what she wanted to and it had made her more blind than before" (145).
Very much "the trees could fight back" via transpiration (117)--the enemy is symbolized as "the black twisted sun wheel stamped in a rectangle of red" (235).
In a series abundant with creative cruelties, perhaps the best occurs here, when "he slithered only into recollections of what he had been" (192)--a "thing that should be dead. A contradiction to the rules of life itself" (192-93).
Plenty of interest going on otherwise. Ultimately, "the forest cared nothing about the flickering life of men" (378)--a "refraction in the polished indifference of the Vorrh" (id.).
Recommended for the vegetative being lost in a long thinking that communicates across all species, those riding a Mobius strip of altered suggestion, and readers who made some notorious operations realigning and inventing genders.
We see that the lost angels of volume 2 believe that "we came to try to understand why you are all so stupid [...] and to protect the tree of knowledge from you" (40-41). These "exist in all time at once" (52), their "temporal disconnection" related to the forest's "predaotry amnesia" (id.)--they believe that humans "are an aberration. They were never meant to be anything more than all the other animals who know their place" (53). Humans "carried evil out of the forest and have evolved its huge spectrum and power. Satan could never have done that" (57). Uncertain at book's end how this is to resolve.
This volume nevertheless ratifies its antecedent regarding the monocular character: "your fine brain is undivided, uncloven and whole" (55). By contrast, perhaps a description of the default condition in how certain others "gather themselves from disposed parts of human personalities, shards of injury or enigma turned spiteful or malicious" (206).
This volume dials up the international conflagration: "We already own four colony states and have control over the mineral wealth of another three. Africa will soon be the storehouse for the Reich's war machine" (67).
We see that trauma is transformative insofar as "painful qualities had solidified into something greater: a nameless strength that had been gifted equally by all those who had loved and abused her" (112). We see also that desire structures perception in "she had 'seen' only what she wanted to and it had made her more blind than before" (145).
Very much "the trees could fight back" via transpiration (117)--the enemy is symbolized as "the black twisted sun wheel stamped in a rectangle of red" (235).
In a series abundant with creative cruelties, perhaps the best occurs here, when "he slithered only into recollections of what he had been" (192)--a "thing that should be dead. A contradiction to the rules of life itself" (192-93).
Plenty of interest going on otherwise. Ultimately, "the forest cared nothing about the flickering life of men" (378)--a "refraction in the polished indifference of the Vorrh" (id.).
Recommended for the vegetative being lost in a long thinking that communicates across all species, those riding a Mobius strip of altered suggestion, and readers who made some notorious operations realigning and inventing genders.
November 5, 2019
As others have noted, Brian Catling seems to have written himself into a corner over the course of three books and so a full resolution is essentially impossible. The Hector/Nicolas bromance has a satisfying conclusion; the ending to the Ishmael/Modesta plot line, less so. Several characters and their stories are dropped entirely. This of course raises the possibility of a fourth book in the series. There are certainly enough unresolved plot threads and surviving characters to justify it. If this happens, I will gladly read it.
That said, despite the excellence of his writing overall with many astonishing and memorable scenes and imagery throughout, Catling's cartoonish, "Africa" is still annoying (complete with "witch doctors" and people calling one another "bwana") even when real Nazis show up or when Cyrena Lohr jumps into the nearest airplane to visit the real life Eugène Marais in Pretoria. As in the first two books, the contrast of "Africa" to the more realistic, "lived in" sequences in London is jarring, sometimes to the point of distraction.
It's no surprise that Alan Moore is a fan. As with some of Moore's work, there's a certain hermetic provincialism in outlook and despite the story's wide-ranging locales, it reads like it was written by someone who doesn't actually get out much. Also, certain plot points (specifically, the idea of a forest using transpiration as a weapon against mankind) seem to have been at least partly inspired by Moore's run on DC's Swamp Thing comics.
Despite these reservations, I really enjoyed the book and the series overall, though if pressed I'd probably say that the second book is my favorite.
That said, despite the excellence of his writing overall with many astonishing and memorable scenes and imagery throughout, Catling's cartoonish, "Africa" is still annoying (complete with "witch doctors" and people calling one another "bwana") even when real Nazis show up or when Cyrena Lohr jumps into the nearest airplane to visit the real life Eugène Marais in Pretoria. As in the first two books, the contrast of "Africa" to the more realistic, "lived in" sequences in London is jarring, sometimes to the point of distraction.
It's no surprise that Alan Moore is a fan. As with some of Moore's work, there's a certain hermetic provincialism in outlook and despite the story's wide-ranging locales, it reads like it was written by someone who doesn't actually get out much. Also, certain plot points (specifically, the idea of a forest using transpiration as a weapon against mankind) seem to have been at least partly inspired by Moore's run on DC's Swamp Thing comics.
Despite these reservations, I really enjoyed the book and the series overall, though if pressed I'd probably say that the second book is my favorite.
December 5, 2019
Wow.
I get the feeling that if Catling were the type of writer to use an outline, or storyboard, or whatever, it'd resemble the sorta thing that conspiracy theorists create when they try to connect Everything with Everything and end up with bulletin boards festooned with old photographs, post-its, newspaper clippings and lots of red twine. That's IF he used one; I also get the feeling that, to him, writing is a ritualistic experience, and that while there's a destination in mind, it's the actual creation and process that matter more to him than the end result.
Who knows. His writing is SO chaotic, and yet I can't recall any other author whose language and prose is so obviously precise, a writer that one can tell just despairs over whether the clouds he's describing are undulating, sighing, or exhaling, or...
But this is me just babbling. I'm not gonna try to reduce this to some bite-sized INTERNET REVIEW. If you wanna read something that challenges you, wrestles you to the ground and then has its way with you, here ya go. 9/10 would eat here again, as long as I could see what the chef was adding to the stew.
I get the feeling that if Catling were the type of writer to use an outline, or storyboard, or whatever, it'd resemble the sorta thing that conspiracy theorists create when they try to connect Everything with Everything and end up with bulletin boards festooned with old photographs, post-its, newspaper clippings and lots of red twine. That's IF he used one; I also get the feeling that, to him, writing is a ritualistic experience, and that while there's a destination in mind, it's the actual creation and process that matter more to him than the end result.
Who knows. His writing is SO chaotic, and yet I can't recall any other author whose language and prose is so obviously precise, a writer that one can tell just despairs over whether the clouds he's describing are undulating, sighing, or exhaling, or...
But this is me just babbling. I'm not gonna try to reduce this to some bite-sized INTERNET REVIEW. If you wanna read something that challenges you, wrestles you to the ground and then has its way with you, here ya go. 9/10 would eat here again, as long as I could see what the chef was adding to the stew.
June 21, 2019
Weird and wonderful and stunning. I’m going to miss reading this and I will be thinking about it for a long time. Highly recommend this series.
April 19, 2022
These three books are amongst the most visual I've ever read. If there is one thing Catling excels at it is description: whether it is lush jungle or grimy city, bakelite robots or a vertically sliced human on a flagpole, exploding steam trains or strange clockwork mechanisms in otherwise empty apartments. He is equally at home with the beautiful as he is with the -very- horrible, and conveys both with considerable grace.
But description, image, seems to be his primary concern. He's not that fussed with any real reason for all these bizarre occurrences beyond a few vague references to the Garden of Eden, angels, and Plants Against Humanity. He's not that fussed with depth of character or even making characters relatable (to the extent that, when they suffer, achieve, drastically transmogrify, I wasn't either).
And so, disappointedly, and for all the trilogy's inherent density of image, the end result is... hollow.
But description, image, seems to be his primary concern. He's not that fussed with any real reason for all these bizarre occurrences beyond a few vague references to the Garden of Eden, angels, and Plants Against Humanity. He's not that fussed with depth of character or even making characters relatable (to the extent that, when they suffer, achieve, drastically transmogrify, I wasn't either).
And so, disappointedly, and for all the trilogy's inherent density of image, the end result is... hollow.
January 4, 2019
The first book was amazing, the second not bad, this one I struggled with. The editing was not great.
September 17, 2018
Brilliant!
This is so full of beauty and ugliness and imagery as only a painter can conjure up. The beautiful is sometimes macabre and the macabre is rendered beautifully. Thank you for this.
This is so full of beauty and ugliness and imagery as only a painter can conjure up. The beautiful is sometimes macabre and the macabre is rendered beautifully. Thank you for this.
August 10, 2018
Spectacular end to this trilogy. Each book built and got better from the feverish and spellbinding beginning. This finale though is easily the greatest of the three and for its own sake demands the trilogy to be read. These books are written with an intense vision, a fervor that compels the reader through each chapter.
To critique some story threads as being weaker than others is to disregard the larger vision of the work, to quite fittingly "miss the forest through the trees." Some of the greatest ideas in fantasy are held here, caught between a historical groundwork and a wild theological landscape.
This is an excellent book deserving all the praise it can get.
To critique some story threads as being weaker than others is to disregard the larger vision of the work, to quite fittingly "miss the forest through the trees." Some of the greatest ideas in fantasy are held here, caught between a historical groundwork and a wild theological landscape.
This is an excellent book deserving all the praise it can get.
October 29, 2018
Not quite the strong finish I was hoping for, but only just not quite. Still crammed full of Catling's trademark imaginative style and flashes of grotesque and sudden violence. My problem is not so much with the book as it is with the necessity of making tangible in the final act what is intangible in the first act. What is unknown is more terrifying than what is unknown; no matter how gruesome the beast, it can never quite match what swirls in our minds before the reveal. A part of me wishes I could go back and inhabit my messy experience of the Vorrh that pre-dated the book's rather tidy ending.
December 17, 2021
The nature of this trilogy has been dark tangents, inexplicable scenes, chaos in the plotting, so-- expectedly-- story lines don't get explained or tidied up much in this last book. Many events are never returned to, many characters abandoned. (Not a negative.) The flatter tone of the second book continued here, though, in the last, never returning to the heights of weird angularity and disturbing scenes that the first one reached. Also, the attempt to wrap up, such that it was, entered into a trite sort of 'nature-without-man' territory. Overall, though, the lush language, general decay and rot, and the fecundity of both Caling's imagination and prose carried the unique if flawed story.
September 11, 2018
The first half was so good, in all of the ways that made the first two books so unique. The 2nd half was when all of the plot debt came back to haunt. It was messy and felt a little rushed. It doesn’t bother me that there were some story lines that were left relatively open ended, but it does bother me how sort of yada-yada’d much of the lead up to the conclusions were.
August 12, 2021
This was extraordinary, and I have to do some thinking before I even try to explain how it is so.
January 15, 2024
Meh. First one was still the best. All the shocking elements just kind of disappeared, like the author tried to censor himself to appeal to more audiences. It's set in Congo, but yet all the non-white voices that existed in the first part have all been murdered, so now you just read rich or Christian voices. The story of Hector and Nicolas never really grabbed my attention either and that was like a third of the book. All their interaction and the fears leading to NOTHING! There were so many mysteries for the author just to say 'let's keep it a mystery and not talk about it anymore at a random point ;)', like NO at least make the mystery make sense still being mysterious. Lazy writing overall, especially compared to the first book which was just so poetic all the way through.
January 28, 2019
Finished reading The Cloven this weekend. It wrapped up the stories of The Vorrh and The Erstwhile. I honestly can’t say that they’re great books, but B Catling brings such poetry to his prose that I’d happily reread them just to expose myself to his style again. (Hence 4 stars instead of 3)
Read
July 18, 2025Still engaging prose, but it felt like he wrote himself into some corners in a few of the plotlines.
"If the mass of the first that lived in light was alien to humans, then the mass that lived in the night was positively hostile in its indifference."
"If the mass of the first that lived in light was alien to humans, then the mass that lived in the night was positively hostile in its indifference."
July 1, 2022
Wonderfully fantastical and exceedingly well-written. The entire trilogy was a rare treat.
March 1, 2024
I really enjoyed this series, the writing is incredible! The ending was a little weird, as was the rest of the series
November 26, 2024
WTF 😒😒😒 I must talk to someone about this series. I am not well.
April 27, 2022
Again this was so weird, but it kept me hooked. In the end not enough was wrapped up for me though and I’m left with many questions.
September 12, 2018
Once again, we return. To the Vorrh, and to the Erstwhile. We are moving towards an end, not completion or fulfillment but the end of things for this world, or rather, our understanding of it. There is a hint of the magic that first swept us through the tangled beauty of the Vorrh, especially in the beginning, the stark mood rising out of the forsaken settings. But, we cannot linger. Tsk, tsk. There is too much ground to cover, because, remember, we are moving towards the end. Before long, as the tempo increases, details brushed over or forgotten or sloshed through to a hasty presentation, the narrative bends to conformity, the plot reverting to the uninspired convention of the previous installment of the trilogy. The checklist of characters is marked, each given their own end, the dangling threads tucked untidy into their hurried resolutions. Nothing is finished here. We come to this place, this end, because we must. The plot demands it. The checklist is done. And we turn and leave, the memory of the magic of the Vorrh still tingling in old pages remembered, as we wonder what might have been, what might have been.
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