B. Catling, The Vorrh ***

The Vorrh is "easily the current century's first landmark work of fantasy" (says Alan Moore) and makes Terry Gilliam "realize how little imagination I have." The title refers to a vast, sentient, magical forest that sounds like the planet in Solaris, and the back cover promises a story that will "rearrange the molecules of your being." Cool and possibly difficult, right?

I'll grant that The Vorrh is imaginative and that it is chock-full of sensuous imagery. The author is particularly fond of ascribing concrete adjectives and verbs to abstract nouns.

[His mother] would come to say good night while he was in the bath...but she never stayed, and the nanny was always left to dry his cooling hope and dress it for sleep. (p 54)

One section that demonstrates Catling's strengths comes when a formerly blind character gains her sight. He describes how her perceptions changed, not entirely for the better. An interesting perspective comprised of distinctive imagery.

One of her favourite times was the evening, when the city's sounds folded down to allow the distant forest its full voice. She loved to feel the exchange, the tides of human and animal sounds passing each other in the growing dominance of the night... High above, the swallows turned into bats.

However, the individual scenes don't pay off in longer narrative threads. For example, one character is a Cyclops living under the care of robots under an abandoned house. (Robots made of Bakelite and filled with a milky fluid.) A mysterious cabal provides material for the robots to educate the boy... to what purpose? We never find out. Another character dispatches the robots, and the Cyclop's character arc has nothing to do with his unknown origins. The same concern applies to Peter Andrews and his bow made from the remains of the prophet Irrinipeste, the tribesman sent to intercept Andrews, and the Scottish foreman who oversees the mindless Limboia in their forestry.

The Vorrh is apparently the first book in an intended trilogy. Is it all just an elaborate origin story for the Cyclop's unborn baby?