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The Vorrh Trilogy #2
The Erstwhile
In London and Germany, strange beings are reanimating themselves. They are the Erstwhile, the angels that failed to protect the Tree of Knowledge, and their reawakening will have major consequences. In Africa, the colonial town of Essenwald has fallen into disarray because the timber workforce has disappeared into the Vorrh. Now a team of specialists are dispatched to find them. Led by Ishmael, the former cyclops, they enter the forest, but the Vorrh will not give them back so easily. To make matters worse, an ancient guardian of the forest has plans for Ishmael and his crew. Meanwhile a child of mixed race has been found abandoned in a remote cottage. Her origins are unknown, but she has powers beyond her own understanding. Conflict is coming, as the old and new, human and inhuman are set on a collision course. Once again blending the real and the imagined, The Erstwhile brings historical figures such as William Blake and places such as the Bedlam Asylum, as well as ingenious creations such as The Kin (a family of robots) together to create unforgettable novel of births and burials, excavations and disappearances."
480 pages, Paperback
First published March 7, 2017
126 people are currently reading
3045 people want to read
About the author
Brian Catling
28 books339 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 169 reviews
November 18, 2018
I was rather underwhelmed by The Vorrh, which didn’t quite evoke the haunting forest of doom I’d hoped for. My subsequent decision to read 'The Erstwhile' nonetheless was due to three factors: a recent fondness for fantasy series, the discovery that Ada Palmer’s demanding Terra Ignota series suddenly became very enjoyable about 200 pages into the second book suggesting the possibility of a similar phenomenon with the Vorrh trilogy, and a superficial liking for the cover with its morose monster. In some ways I enjoyed ‘The Erstwhile’ more than The Vorrh, however I also felt more conscious of its flaws. Catling has a distinctive, febrile writing style that can easily befuddle the reader and conceal his highly erratic plotting. Like too many other middle books in trilogies, ‘The Erstwhile’ ends at an entirely arbitrary point leaving at least seven plot threads dangling. The themes also slosh about vaguely like bathwater. There is undoubtedly some interesting material about colonialism and the First World War. In fact, my favourite plot thread takes place in Germany and England and focuses on the Erstwhile who’ve left the Vorrh. The most vivid, strange, and powerful scenes in the book happen in the mental institutions where these inhuman, incomprehensible creatures ended up. Hector’s oblique quest to meet the European Erstwhile and are a great deal more involving than events in and around Essenwald.
As in The Vorrh, there is plenty of body horror and weird sex. Ishmael returns as a main character, yet spends much of the book sulking and being generally objectionable. Sidrus is also back with a tiresome tendency to maim or kill anybody he encounters. I had more time for Ghertrude and Cyrena. ‘The Erstwhile’ is no more inclined to answer the reader’s questions than The Vorrh. Perhaps part of the appeal of the European plot thread was that it had some resolution? The sheer mysteriousness of events almost enthralled me, but I didn't like most of the main characters enough to watch them bumble about not knowing about the obscure mystical forces operating in the background.
In short, my experience of The Vorrh was repeated: I wondered throughout if I was missing something and just didn’t get it. I also had a rather mixed response to Catling’s writing. At times I found it entertainingly witty:
At others, it got on my nerves:
If The Cloven is more of the same, I doubt I’ll read it. I vaguely want to know what happens to certain characters, but have no confidence that the final book actually ties anything up. Although the Vorrh trilogy is impressively odd, its particular weirdness is of a loose and unfocused character that annoys me as much as it intrigues me. If there’s an underlying structure or logic to where the story is going, I really can’t discern it.
As in The Vorrh, there is plenty of body horror and weird sex. Ishmael returns as a main character, yet spends much of the book sulking and being generally objectionable. Sidrus is also back with a tiresome tendency to maim or kill anybody he encounters. I had more time for Ghertrude and Cyrena. ‘The Erstwhile’ is no more inclined to answer the reader’s questions than The Vorrh. Perhaps part of the appeal of the European plot thread was that it had some resolution? The sheer mysteriousness of events almost enthralled me, but I didn't like most of the main characters enough to watch them bumble about not knowing about the obscure mystical forces operating in the background.
In short, my experience of The Vorrh was repeated: I wondered throughout if I was missing something and just didn’t get it. I also had a rather mixed response to Catling’s writing. At times I found it entertainingly witty:
Gotfrid’s hobby was an obsessive determination to crossbreed different species and thus produce a unique new pelt. He had no scientific skills and a very shabby understanding of natural history, still less of basic genetics. But he did have persistence, no moral code, and an abnormal interest in sexual organs. His little workshop was well worth avoiding. The odours and sounds that emanated from it were spectacular.
That is why the small set of rooms above it was so very cheap.
At others, it got on my nerves:
The smoke rose in the still khaki air and he saw her scars arabesque with her fine long hair and wondered why he was in this forsaken forest rather than her bed. Outside, the reptiles and amphibians began to call to the stars as the shadows squeezed out from the trees and the overpowering darkness pulled the infinite through the intimate with ease.
If The Cloven is more of the same, I doubt I’ll read it. I vaguely want to know what happens to certain characters, but have no confidence that the final book actually ties anything up. Although the Vorrh trilogy is impressively odd, its particular weirdness is of a loose and unfocused character that annoys me as much as it intrigues me. If there’s an underlying structure or logic to where the story is going, I really can’t discern it.
May 7, 2017
Last year I read The Vorrh, an ephemeral dream of a book that took inspiration from Roussel's Impressions of Africa to create a new mythical fantasy set in the early 20th century. The Vorrh, an infinite forest in the heart of Africa, fabled to have the Garden of Eden at its center, deteriorates the minds of men who spend any amount of time within it. Populated by cryptozoological beasts of Catling's own creation, and some built on historical legend, The Vorrh is the first book of a planned trilogy also featured historical figures such as Roussel himself, and photographic genius Eadweard Muybridge, whose passages about capturing motion in still image were some of the most interesting, poetic pieces of prose I'd read in a long time. And keep in mind, this is a genre novel.
I'm pretty interested lately in the intersection of genre and literary fiction because there's a burgeoning space for it. Literary writers giving great treatment to genre tropes, images, aesthetics, themes, motifs--the work of China Miéville and Mark Z Danielewski's The Familiar series would be the best examples of contemporary writers doing it now. There's a rich history of it, and genre can be great and informative when done beautifully. The Vorrh did it all wonderfully. However, this time around, it feels that Catling may have bit off more than he could chew while being unable to re-capture some of that same magic of the first entry in the series.
Firstly, the book is overstuffed with moving parts that have so much promise but never pay off. Starting with book's namesake creatures: the Erstwhile--forsaken angels who it is fabled were left in the garden to protect the Tree of Knowledge from Adam, but left behind on Earth and have just been rotting away here since. They have some interesting scenes throughout, with the primary Erstwhile character living in a mental facility in London, but there's absolutely no pay off with these beings--they foretell no plot point or thematic element other than maybe to build on/confirm the idea that the center of the Vorrh is Eden. But then why do they occupy so much page space? Secondly, with so much of the book taking place in Europe in 1924-1925 with a German Jew in London, there are a few mentions of him hiding his identity, but again, not much pay off or real use is made of it. The settings, themes and ideas don't bloom because it seems Catling may have been working overtime to pack too much into this book rather than focus on the prose. The promise of real dangers of life between two looming wars should weigh in the balance, along with the pressures of identity. The balance is lost, which is a shame because the Erstwhile known as Nicholas in the mental hospital has multiple, shifting identities as Nebuchadnezzar of William Blake's famous monotype print, but also as this angelic being from the origin of time, and a few more even more surreal ones. In all, there are a lot of fragments of ideas with just no general full thought behind them, or rhyme or reason to their purpose. Which is unfortunate, because these fragments are fully ripe with the same magnitude of intrigue that this books predecessor has, it just gets a little overstuffed and mismanaged this time around.
Which gets down to the aesthetic of the book. Where The Vorrh had an ephemeral, out-of-time and imagistic quality, less reliant on plot than themes and motifs, The Erstwhile breaks down into feeling very much like a genre book driven by an "extraction plot" halfway through. Ishmael, the cyclops-hero of the first novel must enter the Vorrh to retrieve the slave labor race of people who have wandered in and become distracted/lost in search of something. Once it turns into this sort of basic genre plot-driven affair, the prose takes the backseat, losing its love-labored poetic quality. Shed of the ephemeral features, the book sacrifices what makes it unique and becomes a catalog of "weird stuff" told plainly, which just isn't that interesting.
As a trilogy, I'm hopeful this one perhaps was acting as a setup for the final book, to get things in order, however, with so many moving parts, I worry that there's just too much to work for in concluding the final book that it won't suffer from the same loss of "magic" that this one did. Perhaps this is just the problem of some series anyway? The Vorrh perhaps was just lightning in a bottle, a beautiful moment in a glimmer.
The first one can be read as a standalone book, by the way, and I would rabidly recommend it to anyone and everyone vehemently. Reading on is up to you. The Erstwhile is still worthwhile, and I can't imagine I will skip this trilogy's conclusion when it hits the shelves.
I'm pretty interested lately in the intersection of genre and literary fiction because there's a burgeoning space for it. Literary writers giving great treatment to genre tropes, images, aesthetics, themes, motifs--the work of China Miéville and Mark Z Danielewski's The Familiar series would be the best examples of contemporary writers doing it now. There's a rich history of it, and genre can be great and informative when done beautifully. The Vorrh did it all wonderfully. However, this time around, it feels that Catling may have bit off more than he could chew while being unable to re-capture some of that same magic of the first entry in the series.
Firstly, the book is overstuffed with moving parts that have so much promise but never pay off. Starting with book's namesake creatures: the Erstwhile--forsaken angels who it is fabled were left in the garden to protect the Tree of Knowledge from Adam, but left behind on Earth and have just been rotting away here since. They have some interesting scenes throughout, with the primary Erstwhile character living in a mental facility in London, but there's absolutely no pay off with these beings--they foretell no plot point or thematic element other than maybe to build on/confirm the idea that the center of the Vorrh is Eden. But then why do they occupy so much page space? Secondly, with so much of the book taking place in Europe in 1924-1925 with a German Jew in London, there are a few mentions of him hiding his identity, but again, not much pay off or real use is made of it. The settings, themes and ideas don't bloom because it seems Catling may have been working overtime to pack too much into this book rather than focus on the prose. The promise of real dangers of life between two looming wars should weigh in the balance, along with the pressures of identity. The balance is lost, which is a shame because the Erstwhile known as Nicholas in the mental hospital has multiple, shifting identities as Nebuchadnezzar of William Blake's famous monotype print, but also as this angelic being from the origin of time, and a few more even more surreal ones. In all, there are a lot of fragments of ideas with just no general full thought behind them, or rhyme or reason to their purpose. Which is unfortunate, because these fragments are fully ripe with the same magnitude of intrigue that this books predecessor has, it just gets a little overstuffed and mismanaged this time around.
Which gets down to the aesthetic of the book. Where The Vorrh had an ephemeral, out-of-time and imagistic quality, less reliant on plot than themes and motifs, The Erstwhile breaks down into feeling very much like a genre book driven by an "extraction plot" halfway through. Ishmael, the cyclops-hero of the first novel must enter the Vorrh to retrieve the slave labor race of people who have wandered in and become distracted/lost in search of something. Once it turns into this sort of basic genre plot-driven affair, the prose takes the backseat, losing its love-labored poetic quality. Shed of the ephemeral features, the book sacrifices what makes it unique and becomes a catalog of "weird stuff" told plainly, which just isn't that interesting.
As a trilogy, I'm hopeful this one perhaps was acting as a setup for the final book, to get things in order, however, with so many moving parts, I worry that there's just too much to work for in concluding the final book that it won't suffer from the same loss of "magic" that this one did. Perhaps this is just the problem of some series anyway? The Vorrh perhaps was just lightning in a bottle, a beautiful moment in a glimmer.
The first one can be read as a standalone book, by the way, and I would rabidly recommend it to anyone and everyone vehemently. Reading on is up to you. The Erstwhile is still worthwhile, and I can't imagine I will skip this trilogy's conclusion when it hits the shelves.
July 29, 2021
I'll just tuck this one carefully onto the "What the fuck?!" shelf I keep those treasures on. It's definitely no Satanskin but it will surely fall well beyond the pale of whatever fiction you might be into. I can, though, very much recommend at least the first two books in this trilogy. In fact, I liked this second volume more than the first since, even though it is fucking wacky, it is a mite tamer than its predecessor.
I don't want to give too much away, but I'll hit you with some salient points that might entice.
The story centers around the Vorrh which is a dark, supernatural, perhaps living (?) forest in the center of Africa. It's the 1920s and there is a German colony there called Essenwald ("forest-eater"!) suffering a labor shortage because its zombie workforce vanished into the Vorrh. In addition, these creepy Swamp Thing-like demihumans are appearing everywhere. They're the "erstwhile" of the title except they're no gooey wood demons at all they're apparently the angels God left to guard the Garden of Eden and when Adam and Eve fucked up on their watch, the angels were punished literally down into the earth. A Jewish professor roams Europe investigating them with surprising results. Some robots living in her basement steal a young woman's baby. Another baby manifests in the forest and torments priests. A former cyclops ventures into the Vorrh to find the missing zombies while his freshly new-skinned nemesis hunts him down. A young governess gets transformed into a shade of blue light. William Blake. And so on.
If you read all that and were like, wow! That sounds like a goddamn good book! you should check out the series because it is.
I don't want to give too much away, but I'll hit you with some salient points that might entice.
The story centers around the Vorrh which is a dark, supernatural, perhaps living (?) forest in the center of Africa. It's the 1920s and there is a German colony there called Essenwald ("forest-eater"!) suffering a labor shortage because its zombie workforce vanished into the Vorrh. In addition, these creepy Swamp Thing-like demihumans are appearing everywhere. They're the "erstwhile" of the title except they're no gooey wood demons at all they're apparently the angels God left to guard the Garden of Eden and when Adam and Eve fucked up on their watch, the angels were punished literally down into the earth. A Jewish professor roams Europe investigating them with surprising results. Some robots living in her basement steal a young woman's baby. Another baby manifests in the forest and torments priests. A former cyclops ventures into the Vorrh to find the missing zombies while his freshly new-skinned nemesis hunts him down. A young governess gets transformed into a shade of blue light. William Blake. And so on.
If you read all that and were like, wow! That sounds like a goddamn good book! you should check out the series because it is.
November 8, 2017
Catling really expanded and layered the established mythology of The Vorrh in a continually well written and exciting way. While this book was less of the wide-scope, epic that The Vorrh was, it felt like a story that took advantage of the previously grounded world and focused in on points and characters that mattered with an awesome and well-earned ending. Catling also continues to be a master of his poetic prose that feels like the only suitable way to tell these stories from the edges of the Vorrh.
January 9, 2023
Molto meno intenso e interessante del primo. Contorto e confuso, con alcuni momenti belli
June 24, 2021
I may change my mind once I get some distance, but I’m pretty sure The Erstwhile is far as I’m going to go with this series.
I was lukewarm on the first book (The Vorrh), and while I found the second book to be decidedly better, it’s really only better in the sense that a bee sting is better than decapitation. They both suck; it’s just a matter of degree.
Wait.
That’s not fair.
As bee stings go, I actually found parts of The Erstwhile to be compelling. As in the first book, our scene is set in the city of Essenwald, a German village hidden deep in a African forest. It’s a magical place. Venture into the forest and you lose your memory. Visit the right house and you’ll encounter sentient sex robots. And then there’s the question of the title characters themselves, fallen angels who failed to protect the Tree of Knowledge in the Garden of Eden. It is, to be clear, a work of astounding imagination. That’s not up for debate.
But, as you might guess from that brief description, it’s also a little busy. And that’s part of the problem. Off the top of my head, I can think of at least half a dozen main plot strands, including (in addition to the above) a cyclops’ quest to locate a hidden tribe of zombie workers and a scientist’s journey to London’s Bedlam asylum to find an escaped Erstwhile.
Author Bryan Catling asks us to invest ourselves equally in these different storylines, but the problem is this: they’re all written in a style that might charitably be described as inscrutable.
I don’t have a problem with bending my brain a little (full disclosure: I’m currently teaching a class this summer that focuses on strategies for untangling challenging texts), but if I’m going to expend the energy, I need to feel like it’s worth the effort.
And here’s the ugly truth: I didn’t care about anything that was happening or anyone it was happening to, and the degree to which Catling’s unnecessarily ornate style obscures what’s happening works to the book’s detriment.
I should have loved this series.
There’s absolutely a rip-roaring adventure to be found in here somewhere.
But the effort it would take to find it seems singularly unrewarding.
I was lukewarm on the first book (The Vorrh), and while I found the second book to be decidedly better, it’s really only better in the sense that a bee sting is better than decapitation. They both suck; it’s just a matter of degree.
Wait.
That’s not fair.
As bee stings go, I actually found parts of The Erstwhile to be compelling. As in the first book, our scene is set in the city of Essenwald, a German village hidden deep in a African forest. It’s a magical place. Venture into the forest and you lose your memory. Visit the right house and you’ll encounter sentient sex robots. And then there’s the question of the title characters themselves, fallen angels who failed to protect the Tree of Knowledge in the Garden of Eden. It is, to be clear, a work of astounding imagination. That’s not up for debate.
But, as you might guess from that brief description, it’s also a little busy. And that’s part of the problem. Off the top of my head, I can think of at least half a dozen main plot strands, including (in addition to the above) a cyclops’ quest to locate a hidden tribe of zombie workers and a scientist’s journey to London’s Bedlam asylum to find an escaped Erstwhile.
Author Bryan Catling asks us to invest ourselves equally in these different storylines, but the problem is this: they’re all written in a style that might charitably be described as inscrutable.
I don’t have a problem with bending my brain a little (full disclosure: I’m currently teaching a class this summer that focuses on strategies for untangling challenging texts), but if I’m going to expend the energy, I need to feel like it’s worth the effort.
And here’s the ugly truth: I didn’t care about anything that was happening or anyone it was happening to, and the degree to which Catling’s unnecessarily ornate style obscures what’s happening works to the book’s detriment.
I should have loved this series.
There’s absolutely a rip-roaring adventure to be found in here somewhere.
But the effort it would take to find it seems singularly unrewarding.
August 1, 2017
While The Vorrh smashed my expectations, I think I went into The Erstwhile expecting too much. I wanted an expansion of storylines that were ultimately left open-ended - where is my finale with the Sea-People receiving whatever message was to be given to them, and where is Nicholas, and what happened with Sidrus and Oneofthewilliams, and where on earth is Gertrude's daughter??? - and spent, in my opinion, far too much time on Ishmael and the Ishmael/Cyrena/Gertrude drama. I grew really, really tired of Ishmael in particular - it makes the ending a bit more satisfying, but ultimately is framed entirely in relation to him, which I think gives him too much credit - and I felt like I was blinkered for a good deal of the story, constantly forced to look at one scene when I really wanted to look around at others. That being said, every moment spent with the Erstwhile themselves was intriguing and there were a lot of wonderful stylistic choices and plot threads throughout the book. There were so many great ideas - the prophet girl storyline was engaging and mysterious in the same vein as much of The Vorrh's story, and the first half of the book included a fascinating glimpse into colonial exploitation and otherworldly experiments in London - but many of them felt unfinished and left me waiting for even a semblance of an answer, or at least some level of conclusion. To sum up what could go on for a while, I was left far too wanting.
I do have to say, too, that there was a much heavier undertone of misogyny than even the first book (which... definitely had its moments) especially re: Ishmael's relationships. Where before the female characters around Ishmael felt like their own characters, with their own motivations and personalities, it got to a point where they only moved in relation to Ishmael, and even new characters like Sholeh existed solely to affect (and have sex with) him. I understand that I get uniquely and sometimes unfairly frustrated with a heavy or persistent focus on (het) sex, especially when I feel it does nothing for the plot, but there were scenes here that crossed that line and felt self-indulgent on behalf of the author. And Sholeh - oh, man. A mysterious, beautiful, 'exotic' dancer who seduces Ishmael and hides the scars on her face, which do nothing to counter her beauty or her sexual attractiveness of course, and who is then tortured and brutalized off-screen, only reappearing from Ishmael's perspective as a disgusting unidentified creature in the dark which he runs from, and then dies off-screen? Really?? I get that you have to have Ishamel tried and executed, and though the symbolism is a brick to the face I absolutely love the idea of an intricate tree guillotine, but really? Must we watch Ishmael die not for the betrayal of his fellows in pursuit of power in the Vorrh, but for being falsely accused of murdering a woman who everyone calls a whore? And even at the end, we see Cyrena still completely within Ishmael's circle of influence, sitting practically on a throne and to watch him die. This would give her agency were it not for the fact that she is existing as the witness to his murder on behalf of the reader, and that she calls out his name at the very end. The only women who were remotely spared from this final scene were Gertrude and Meta, and arguably only Meta (and maybe the girl-prophet) really managed to be a character remotely independent of Ishmael and his personal story.
Ultimately, I feel this book did not personally astound me or even, at times, hold my interest mostly because the direction of focusing so much on Ishmael's story (and the rather heavy-handed purely-Biblical metaphors going on at the end) left me behind. I'll recommend this book to anyone who wants more of the city plots and anyone who wants to follow all that symbolism to the end, but for anyone like me - who was always more interested in the creation of culture and mythos around and in relation to the Vorrh, and the interesting faux-blending of European and non-Western cultural ideas, and the more delicate and transformed religious undertones, and more of the mystery of the first book - I would caution to lower your expectations. There are moments to applaud - the two lines about the tree of knowledge ultimately being for the trees struck me like poetry and justified, for me, quite a lot of the journey - but be prepared for a lot of pyrite among the gold.
June 6, 2017
Magnificently weird. Lives up to the promise of The Vorrh without feeling like it's simply retreading the same fantastical grounds. These two are among the best novels I've read in recent years.
March 14, 2017
Ok, this is sort of a review for the first two books of this series, The Voorh and The Erstwhile. I am a lifelong scifi and fantasy fan, I mean...39 of my 44 years. But I have a weird relationship with "weird" fiction, it's like you meet a girl at the grocery store, she's got blue hair..sorta cute then bam, before you know it, you wake up a month later and wonder why you have a half elf in your bed.
Bad analogy, but its like beautiful language, well written and grabs you in spots. Then, it trails off, the turn to the strange that pulled you in to start with goes TOO strange and loses you. I have faith that maybe Mr. Catling has a endgame in mine and I will stick with it, but that's the OCD in me to see it through. Good? worth your time? I say yes.. it might however be a bit too out there to be amazing.
Bad analogy, but its like beautiful language, well written and grabs you in spots. Then, it trails off, the turn to the strange that pulled you in to start with goes TOO strange and loses you. I have faith that maybe Mr. Catling has a endgame in mine and I will stick with it, but that's the OCD in me to see it through. Good? worth your time? I say yes.. it might however be a bit too out there to be amazing.
August 24, 2017
I wished I had loved it.
But nope. While I like the world it is set in, the undramatic pacing and the tone of the book, time and again, everything in me screamed "old white dude sex fantasy"!
I scrapped it when a male character was offered a sex slave as a gift because I had no interest in finding out where that goes. The portrayal of the few other female characters had me expecting nothing good.
On that note... diversity. Most of this and the first book is set in an colonial city somewhere in Africa. Yet, the characters are white. The few poc portrayed come along so trope-y and ill constructed that it seems the author has never sought any actual insight into the experience and history of colonialism from the pov of people of colour. Same with women. It doesn#t feel like he has ever bothered to learn or understand about an actual living female and now tries to write some character into a pretty face bursting with emotions and mother instincts.
No, I wish I had loved it, but I was bitterly disappointed. I'm back to reading authors who give a damn about diversity.
But nope. While I like the world it is set in, the undramatic pacing and the tone of the book, time and again, everything in me screamed "old white dude sex fantasy"!
I scrapped it when a male character was offered a sex slave as a gift because I had no interest in finding out where that goes. The portrayal of the few other female characters had me expecting nothing good.
On that note... diversity. Most of this and the first book is set in an colonial city somewhere in Africa. Yet, the characters are white. The few poc portrayed come along so trope-y and ill constructed that it seems the author has never sought any actual insight into the experience and history of colonialism from the pov of people of colour. Same with women. It doesn#t feel like he has ever bothered to learn or understand about an actual living female and now tries to write some character into a pretty face bursting with emotions and mother instincts.
No, I wish I had loved it, but I was bitterly disappointed. I'm back to reading authors who give a damn about diversity.
October 20, 2017
Good GOD I hope there's another book that follows this. Catling is just too good! My head exploded again throughout this book (like it did the entire time I was reading it's predecessor, The Vorrh). I honestly wish I was smarter because these books are so loaded with obscure and wonderful references to literature, art, science, history, religion... there are sections throughout the book that while I was reading I knew there was even more to glean from it that I was already getting if only I could just expand my brain a little more!
Not quite as graphic as The Vorrh but equally wild and messed up. The brain behind these books is magnificent.
Oh, and the end left me needing answers! What happened to the Limboia's need for a Fleyber? What happens to Ishmael?? Where is Rowena? Why can't Ghertrude see Meta? Does Sidrus get what he deserves? What about Adam and all the angels that are slowly coming back to life?? HELLLP I NEED TO KNOWWWWW!
Not quite as graphic as The Vorrh but equally wild and messed up. The brain behind these books is magnificent.
Oh, and the end left me needing answers! What happened to the Limboia's need for a Fleyber? What happens to Ishmael?? Where is Rowena? Why can't Ghertrude see Meta? Does Sidrus get what he deserves? What about Adam and all the angels that are slowly coming back to life?? HELLLP I NEED TO KNOWWWWW!
March 22, 2025
2.5 rounded up.
Well… that was weird. There is more worldbuilding in this second Vorrh book, and things are a bot more straight and narrow but the Erstwhile is ultimately just satisfactory as historical fantasy and just weird as a book in general. The Vorrh had a lot of mystery and worldbuilding and it could get away with more. You need more for the sequel.
Well… that was weird. There is more worldbuilding in this second Vorrh book, and things are a bot more straight and narrow but the Erstwhile is ultimately just satisfactory as historical fantasy and just weird as a book in general. The Vorrh had a lot of mystery and worldbuilding and it could get away with more. You need more for the sequel.
January 8, 2019
Perhaps not as intoxicating as the first volume, this is still working through the same set of bizarre and often sublime assumptions, whereunder we must recall that "the mythic and the pragmatic go hand in hand" (70). In that connection, the setting has developed into the interwar period, wherein characters notice "a discreet badge," seen "more and more recently," indicating "a new political devotion" (104) (plainly the ).
Very much this setting is haunted by the specter of a possession war and anti-colonialist uprising--but in this volume the colonized spaces re-insert themselves into the colonizer through the mechanisms of the titular characters (the angels who failed to guard the tree of knowledge in paradise and are hence in exile--they are nevertheless part of that lost paradise) as well as the monocular deuteragonist of the first book: "His vision had never been a twisted slngshot like theirs. Their optic nerves crossing over in a perversity of creation: right eye to left brain, left eye to right brain. He had no such entanglement. His was a singular clarity, a straight line from his vision to his uncloven mind" (29). As to the former, we must guard against "countless cases of demonic utterance masquerading as angelic manifestation" (92); are they "the deformed and degenerate remnant of the celestial beings that were placed on earth to protect the Garden of Eden," that is, "not fallen angels [such as Lucifer] but lost ones" (93)? They are worked up with speculative panache: "some tried to mate with humans" (255), but some had "dreams of becoming angels again--or worse, men" (id.); but moreover, they left the Vorrh by "shedding their visibility" through "temporal division," separating "their visual reference from their corporeal existence" (256). Because of this, it seems, they have a certain prescience, such as when one tells a Jewish character in London "Now you don't have to go back and be burnt with all those others" (312).
The rule of colonialism requires two things: "an unquestionable sense of rightness, being demonstrated through its constant display of blind superiority, and an unlimited supply of raw material of great value" (45). Part of the issue for the latter part of this rule is "the salvation of the business class through the reanimation of the timber industry" (205), which can't be a good idea when the timber is drawn from Eden. This extraction is contingent upon the forced labor of mind-wiped proletarians of the first volume: "if they could be controlled, then the industry would restaert" (394). The principle of this sort of predatory capitalism is nicely described: "to transubstantiate in the last rays of the sun setting on a world that would forget the the depth of its yesterdays and strain only towards the limitations of its tomorrows" (274).
An archaeology of villainy: "They kept the same name as their innocent founder, who had dragged the singed rabbi and the smoking sacred scrolls of the Sefer haYashar from the great conflagration of Jerusalem. This noble act performed by the famed centurion had started a quest for the true knowledge outside of the guarded tabernacle of authorised thought. In the case of the Sidrusians, it had declined and become sullied with the Tubal-Cain, the testaments of Enoch, and the Lillithian blasphemies" (76). His concerns certainly are shared by others, who believe that "the countenance of the world after the Vorrh is gone" is void of humanity (144). Villain may want this, as he thinks that the Vorrh would "retaliate; slowly over years it would change the balance of transpiration. A 5 percent reduction in the purity of oxygen would stop all breathers" (179). Good times in paradise.
Recommended for those speaking to the final closed door of a departed lover, persons in conversation with abnormality beyond understanding, and autointerers, people who actually want to bury themselves alive.
Very much this setting is haunted by the specter of a possession war and anti-colonialist uprising--but in this volume the colonized spaces re-insert themselves into the colonizer through the mechanisms of the titular characters (the angels who failed to guard the tree of knowledge in paradise and are hence in exile--they are nevertheless part of that lost paradise) as well as the monocular deuteragonist of the first book: "His vision had never been a twisted slngshot like theirs. Their optic nerves crossing over in a perversity of creation: right eye to left brain, left eye to right brain. He had no such entanglement. His was a singular clarity, a straight line from his vision to his uncloven mind" (29). As to the former, we must guard against "countless cases of demonic utterance masquerading as angelic manifestation" (92); are they "the deformed and degenerate remnant of the celestial beings that were placed on earth to protect the Garden of Eden," that is, "not fallen angels [such as Lucifer] but lost ones" (93)? They are worked up with speculative panache: "some tried to mate with humans" (255), but some had "dreams of becoming angels again--or worse, men" (id.); but moreover, they left the Vorrh by "shedding their visibility" through "temporal division," separating "their visual reference from their corporeal existence" (256). Because of this, it seems, they have a certain prescience, such as when one tells a Jewish character in London "Now you don't have to go back and be burnt with all those others" (312).
The rule of colonialism requires two things: "an unquestionable sense of rightness, being demonstrated through its constant display of blind superiority, and an unlimited supply of raw material of great value" (45). Part of the issue for the latter part of this rule is "the salvation of the business class through the reanimation of the timber industry" (205), which can't be a good idea when the timber is drawn from Eden. This extraction is contingent upon the forced labor of mind-wiped proletarians of the first volume: "if they could be controlled, then the industry would restaert" (394). The principle of this sort of predatory capitalism is nicely described: "to transubstantiate in the last rays of the sun setting on a world that would forget the the depth of its yesterdays and strain only towards the limitations of its tomorrows" (274).
An archaeology of villainy: "They kept the same name as their innocent founder, who had dragged the singed rabbi and the smoking sacred scrolls of the Sefer haYashar from the great conflagration of Jerusalem. This noble act performed by the famed centurion had started a quest for the true knowledge outside of the guarded tabernacle of authorised thought. In the case of the Sidrusians, it had declined and become sullied with the Tubal-Cain, the testaments of Enoch, and the Lillithian blasphemies" (76). His concerns certainly are shared by others, who believe that "the countenance of the world after the Vorrh is gone" is void of humanity (144). Villain may want this, as he thinks that the Vorrh would "retaliate; slowly over years it would change the balance of transpiration. A 5 percent reduction in the purity of oxygen would stop all breathers" (179). Good times in paradise.
Recommended for those speaking to the final closed door of a departed lover, persons in conversation with abnormality beyond understanding, and autointerers, people who actually want to bury themselves alive.
July 25, 2022
After ‘Earwig’ and the bulk of Edgar Allen Poe ‘The Vorrh’ trilogy becomes part of a greater whole. The narrative proposition of a priest looking after a baby of darkness with an impressionable peasant feels of genre. Folk horror like Robert Eggars work. In fact, Eggars, read ‘The Vorrh.’ It is a realistic fantasy to picture ‘The Vorrh’ adapted for the screen and directed by Robert Eggars. Only this’ll have double the budget as ‘The Northman’ if done right, if done the ‘Labyrinth’ kind of way.
I’ve forgotten Ghertrude’s face. And whether Ishmael’s skin is ridged or anything weird as an adult. From memory he was left with the harsh cyclopic head and the pig’s tail spring of a slug of a chode.
This is well written in the sequel way in that things are coming back to me revelatory. The stitched eye being slightly smaller, the middle eye perhaps being displaced half an inch to make room, it perhaps already having a tear duct to the side giving it the hint of one of a missing pair. Now with a little unseeing mate, in an unnatural awkward position, still more natural than one central eye.
I read this book up until the fifth chapter when I first got it, likely upon finishing ‘Vorrh.’ I didn’t not like it, only it was too much. Effectively attempting a 1000 page book without thinking. The first one probably took close to a month.
I’ve written about this in my ‘Alice in the Cities’ review on Letterboxd in conjunction with Wim Wenders use of the same relationship dynamic. The child-guardian thing. Saying Catling has not had the time to explore this in depth in the past and so is doing it as an old man. With two baby daughters and mothers here, but later he wasn’t done and penned ‘Earwig’ a novella focused on a girl-senior relationship.
It is hard to get through some parts. The characters seem to be doing random things, or not much is happening. The interest in the world has dropped. The Vorrh is a topic of conversation in the background. All the interesting things from the first novel are in the past and mould these characters. But it feels like they are roaming around in a lifeless sequel-made-by-completely-different-people way, only with Catling’s prose exactly. There are abstractions on simple things that are more distracting than helpful in any way. The technologies of the first book, the world building of the human world surrounded by this ancient forest heart to the planet is fascinating. Tsungali had a great revenge plot with epic saloon action scenes mixed into his bit. His story was rich. The relationship between Ishmael and Ghertrude was beautifully twisted. I loved the love scenes featuring Ishmael. Cyrena was a cartoon and I loved her. In ‘The Erstwhile’ she has lost weight, that is to say she is muted. It feels like the side character that had all the one liners in the first one written in to a sequel to attempt crowd pleasing, only they are now included in the drama and there is nothing to it. The plot with the hypnosis was intriguing and the experiments and freakish happenings were vivid. Here Catling has a young child strip before telling you why. It’s perverted. It’s not good enough to excuse itself. ‘The Vorrh’ had some similar weakness in maintains attention.
In all of the plot lines I don’t see where any of them are headed. Everyone is static. There is no adventure story (as of chapter eighteen). Ghertrude is not exploring she is stagnating as a mother in Kühler Brunnen. Cyrena has no purpose and was sincerely a bit part in that storyline originally, now made more prominent than the freak Ishmael.
It got much better after that. Cyrena is now moreso on the minds of everyone which is preferable. Ishmael is a star again. We’re less in the domestic drama space.
One of the reasons I fell into and really enjoyed the first book, ‘The Vorrh’ was for all that energy Catling gave us. It is in the footsteps of Poe and the like, writings that give off a heavy aura usually of death. Deathly revenge, violent outbursts led not by self will, morbid weaponry of ghostly magic. I took it all. It is mysterious too. Which is its downfall. Because after ‘Earwig’ and reading most of ‘The Erstwhile’ I am finding that he writes mysteries for mystery’s sake. [Here I forget the feeling of mystery. Not one for a thriller. But it is mysterious. *smirks, raises eyebrows*]
I was on a bus to Dundee on half battery keeping my phone off as I need to show the bus driver my phone to get back. I needed to note so I whipped out my pen, no shame, and annotated… This I would never do. Pencil or nothing. But I’m travelling and intend to give the book away now to lighten my bags a few hundred grams. I felt bad choosing this to take with me though I promised myself that I’d finish this trilogy while I still remembered the first one. And seeing as I intend on reading ‘LOTR’ this year I thought it fitting to parallel that with this contemporary series. When it really sunk in that I will no longer see this book soon, that I was the one who paid $18/22 for it to come into reader’s circulation, it quickly became cannon fodder. Slid loose into my tote, now peeling at the edges as that coating does on book covers. The spine has creased which never occurs when I’m reading a book from new. I was careless with it.
Here are the permanent additions I made in pen, extended:
Page 415, “He had run away in disgust and dread when her shredded vocal cords must have been calling to him.”—This dastardly man. B. Catling. I looked away as if that did anything to stop it once read. This kind of thing, that he is capable of this, is it easy shock value or is it exceptional because of the physical response? He does it often. Is it actually because the majority has the atmosphere. It’s uncanny valley stuff.
Page 418–Ishmael was always an abomination. The more human he tried to become the further he got from his true nature (spelling out the obvious). A true freakish individual. Whom shouldn’t be alive. I feel it’s a massive compliment to an author that I will point out these things. Often because they are so self explanatory in the writing that you don’t really get the emotive effect, you don’t really relate to the story because the character(s) aren’t believable or tangible enough. This is Ishmael’s story, and I really root for what will make him happy.
In fact this is the story of man vs. trees as one of the characters, I believe Hector has the revelation saying God made the tree of knowledge—The Vorrh—for itself, to exist as trees, to be living nature but not have free will, where the Garden of Eden—territory of man—is the forsaken place, even angels are limited to this place. Trees are the alpha in this relationship.
Page 429 (when Catling creates a satisfying goodbye to Ishmael as he winds up in ‘Erstwhile’), “he knew now that his greatest mistake was wanting to be human.”—It’s stupid of me to claim there is nothing but mystery as the content of this book. These struggles of humanity with colonialism, the pursuit of humanity, the failure. This is the content to hold onto while the mystery prepares to unfold. And this trickling of meaningful substance should be enough.
Same page, “his present face was a travesty.”—Touching. Page 430, “the way he was born, a cyclops.”—Congratulations! Impressive.
Page 421–This historical bit of gorey scientific whimsy impressed me. Whether or not it is real, the question inflates the hilarity. This was my reaction to a paragraph, amongst Brian Catling’s ‘Vorrh’ history of the guillotine, where some scientists use these severed heads as an excuse to try and animate a head on its own by pumping blood through it, encouraging consciousness with slaps, the image of frenzied scientists enacting this was lol-worthy.
Meta and Ghertrude’s ending was interesting. He surely worked well on a “paths travelled” scale. Meta coming into this emotional, clingy relationship after being assaulted by clockwork water AI was a satisfying continuation after such a despicable and questionable event. There’s no restraint when it comes to the violence with B.C.
Page 458, “Mutter was in the crowd, standing on a high step and eating a pork pie the size of the hub of a small cartwheel…and grinned.”—Mutter eating an oversized pie is very humourous. It falls into the ‘Fable III’ video game sense of humour and aesthetic. Villagers finding pleasure in disgusting things. This case is simply a large portion pie. Mince and meat juice around his lips.
The ending is truly epic, completing the arc from mundanity to fantastical contraptions and rituals of this society.
Had a couple instances where the cover created conversation. I assumed B.C did the visuals, I’m sure this was designed by him. But the graphic is originally from the real William Blake. ‘Nebuchadnezzar.’ The piece described in the prologue of this book. Before I knew this, Maria apologised in approach to get a better look at the image and the title. Intrigued by it I dissuaded her from further interest. These books are not altogether worth one’s time. As far as fantasy goes they are interesting. As far as literature they are one for the pile of readable stuff. In a flash at the Kelvingrove Gallery cafe I pulled this book out of my bag only to have to return it because the kitchens closed for breakfast even after the maître d said it’d be fine… but the waiter who took my order brought over the glass of tap water I would’ve expected if I were to be charged for something and then inquired “what was that book that has William Blake’s ‘Nebuchadnezzar’ on it?” I described ‘The Vorrh’ without bias now, because William Blake is a character and so it’d be rude to steer someone away who would be taken by B.C’s fan service.
I’ve forgotten Ghertrude’s face. And whether Ishmael’s skin is ridged or anything weird as an adult. From memory he was left with the harsh cyclopic head and the pig’s tail spring of a slug of a chode.
This is well written in the sequel way in that things are coming back to me revelatory. The stitched eye being slightly smaller, the middle eye perhaps being displaced half an inch to make room, it perhaps already having a tear duct to the side giving it the hint of one of a missing pair. Now with a little unseeing mate, in an unnatural awkward position, still more natural than one central eye.
I read this book up until the fifth chapter when I first got it, likely upon finishing ‘Vorrh.’ I didn’t not like it, only it was too much. Effectively attempting a 1000 page book without thinking. The first one probably took close to a month.
I’ve written about this in my ‘Alice in the Cities’ review on Letterboxd in conjunction with Wim Wenders use of the same relationship dynamic. The child-guardian thing. Saying Catling has not had the time to explore this in depth in the past and so is doing it as an old man. With two baby daughters and mothers here, but later he wasn’t done and penned ‘Earwig’ a novella focused on a girl-senior relationship.
It is hard to get through some parts. The characters seem to be doing random things, or not much is happening. The interest in the world has dropped. The Vorrh is a topic of conversation in the background. All the interesting things from the first novel are in the past and mould these characters. But it feels like they are roaming around in a lifeless sequel-made-by-completely-different-people way, only with Catling’s prose exactly. There are abstractions on simple things that are more distracting than helpful in any way. The technologies of the first book, the world building of the human world surrounded by this ancient forest heart to the planet is fascinating. Tsungali had a great revenge plot with epic saloon action scenes mixed into his bit. His story was rich. The relationship between Ishmael and Ghertrude was beautifully twisted. I loved the love scenes featuring Ishmael. Cyrena was a cartoon and I loved her. In ‘The Erstwhile’ she has lost weight, that is to say she is muted. It feels like the side character that had all the one liners in the first one written in to a sequel to attempt crowd pleasing, only they are now included in the drama and there is nothing to it. The plot with the hypnosis was intriguing and the experiments and freakish happenings were vivid. Here Catling has a young child strip before telling you why. It’s perverted. It’s not good enough to excuse itself. ‘The Vorrh’ had some similar weakness in maintains attention.
In all of the plot lines I don’t see where any of them are headed. Everyone is static. There is no adventure story (as of chapter eighteen). Ghertrude is not exploring she is stagnating as a mother in Kühler Brunnen. Cyrena has no purpose and was sincerely a bit part in that storyline originally, now made more prominent than the freak Ishmael.
It got much better after that. Cyrena is now moreso on the minds of everyone which is preferable. Ishmael is a star again. We’re less in the domestic drama space.
One of the reasons I fell into and really enjoyed the first book, ‘The Vorrh’ was for all that energy Catling gave us. It is in the footsteps of Poe and the like, writings that give off a heavy aura usually of death. Deathly revenge, violent outbursts led not by self will, morbid weaponry of ghostly magic. I took it all. It is mysterious too. Which is its downfall. Because after ‘Earwig’ and reading most of ‘The Erstwhile’ I am finding that he writes mysteries for mystery’s sake. [Here I forget the feeling of mystery. Not one for a thriller. But it is mysterious. *smirks, raises eyebrows*]
I was on a bus to Dundee on half battery keeping my phone off as I need to show the bus driver my phone to get back. I needed to note so I whipped out my pen, no shame, and annotated… This I would never do. Pencil or nothing. But I’m travelling and intend to give the book away now to lighten my bags a few hundred grams. I felt bad choosing this to take with me though I promised myself that I’d finish this trilogy while I still remembered the first one. And seeing as I intend on reading ‘LOTR’ this year I thought it fitting to parallel that with this contemporary series. When it really sunk in that I will no longer see this book soon, that I was the one who paid $18/22 for it to come into reader’s circulation, it quickly became cannon fodder. Slid loose into my tote, now peeling at the edges as that coating does on book covers. The spine has creased which never occurs when I’m reading a book from new. I was careless with it.
Here are the permanent additions I made in pen, extended:
Page 415, “He had run away in disgust and dread when her shredded vocal cords must have been calling to him.”—This dastardly man. B. Catling. I looked away as if that did anything to stop it once read. This kind of thing, that he is capable of this, is it easy shock value or is it exceptional because of the physical response? He does it often. Is it actually because the majority has the atmosphere. It’s uncanny valley stuff.
Page 418–Ishmael was always an abomination. The more human he tried to become the further he got from his true nature (spelling out the obvious). A true freakish individual. Whom shouldn’t be alive. I feel it’s a massive compliment to an author that I will point out these things. Often because they are so self explanatory in the writing that you don’t really get the emotive effect, you don’t really relate to the story because the character(s) aren’t believable or tangible enough. This is Ishmael’s story, and I really root for what will make him happy.
In fact this is the story of man vs. trees as one of the characters, I believe Hector has the revelation saying God made the tree of knowledge—The Vorrh—for itself, to exist as trees, to be living nature but not have free will, where the Garden of Eden—territory of man—is the forsaken place, even angels are limited to this place. Trees are the alpha in this relationship.
Page 429 (when Catling creates a satisfying goodbye to Ishmael as he winds up in ‘Erstwhile’), “he knew now that his greatest mistake was wanting to be human.”—It’s stupid of me to claim there is nothing but mystery as the content of this book. These struggles of humanity with colonialism, the pursuit of humanity, the failure. This is the content to hold onto while the mystery prepares to unfold. And this trickling of meaningful substance should be enough.
Same page, “his present face was a travesty.”—Touching. Page 430, “the way he was born, a cyclops.”—Congratulations! Impressive.
Page 421–This historical bit of gorey scientific whimsy impressed me. Whether or not it is real, the question inflates the hilarity. This was my reaction to a paragraph, amongst Brian Catling’s ‘Vorrh’ history of the guillotine, where some scientists use these severed heads as an excuse to try and animate a head on its own by pumping blood through it, encouraging consciousness with slaps, the image of frenzied scientists enacting this was lol-worthy.
Meta and Ghertrude’s ending was interesting. He surely worked well on a “paths travelled” scale. Meta coming into this emotional, clingy relationship after being assaulted by clockwork water AI was a satisfying continuation after such a despicable and questionable event. There’s no restraint when it comes to the violence with B.C.
Page 458, “Mutter was in the crowd, standing on a high step and eating a pork pie the size of the hub of a small cartwheel…and grinned.”—Mutter eating an oversized pie is very humourous. It falls into the ‘Fable III’ video game sense of humour and aesthetic. Villagers finding pleasure in disgusting things. This case is simply a large portion pie. Mince and meat juice around his lips.
The ending is truly epic, completing the arc from mundanity to fantastical contraptions and rituals of this society.
Had a couple instances where the cover created conversation. I assumed B.C did the visuals, I’m sure this was designed by him. But the graphic is originally from the real William Blake. ‘Nebuchadnezzar.’ The piece described in the prologue of this book. Before I knew this, Maria apologised in approach to get a better look at the image and the title. Intrigued by it I dissuaded her from further interest. These books are not altogether worth one’s time. As far as fantasy goes they are interesting. As far as literature they are one for the pile of readable stuff. In a flash at the Kelvingrove Gallery cafe I pulled this book out of my bag only to have to return it because the kitchens closed for breakfast even after the maître d said it’d be fine… but the waiter who took my order brought over the glass of tap water I would’ve expected if I were to be charged for something and then inquired “what was that book that has William Blake’s ‘Nebuchadnezzar’ on it?” I described ‘The Vorrh’ without bias now, because William Blake is a character and so it’d be rude to steer someone away who would be taken by B.C’s fan service.
June 20, 2018
This is a lesser work. That which precedes this one is so much more: more dynamic, more fluid, more mysterious, more ethereal. And this? The ingredients are present and even familiar. There are hints, vague tastes of the previous, scenes and characters we clamor to know more about, our appetite whetted, tongues whisking our lips waiting to once again delve into the strange beauty of Catling's world. But, alas. We are disappointed. The flavor is all wrong. Undercooked or overexposed. Perhaps both. This is a story that rushes through to its end and feels rushed in every possible way striving for a purpose that is never really known. There is no magic here. It is gone. It is almost (almost) perfunctory. We want the bizarre, the strange and the wonderous words and lyrical narrative of The Vorrh. Instead, the Erstwhile, at its best, is a bridge, a modestly accommodating bridge to the (hopeful) return waiting for us at this tale's end.
Read
January 8, 2019there was something about this that didn't grab me quite like the vorrh but i still literally carried this everywhere i went for two days and read it every spare moment i could find. i think i miss some of the surprise reveals of the vorrh? and somehow despite being even more supernatural the magic feels less... mystical. definitely loved it however. it and its predecessor are essential reading for literary fantasy magical realism folktale nerds
July 1, 2017
Im confused for why I picked this up. I wasnt the biggest fan of the 1st novel. There were parts that amazed me but then more parts that were dull/slow. Again with this book 2, I found majority of the novel just ramblings but again written beautifully. Dont think I'll read anymore by this author, too much confusion, and felt like a chore to finish.
June 10, 2017
Remarkable book; I've been around the block when it comes to fantasy. I rarely feel like I'm reading something I haven't read before, but I got that feeling with the Erstwhile. I don't usually stay up late to finish a book; I did with this.
May 11, 2017
Highly imperfect yet wholly, brilliantly original. Five stars for sheer imagination alone, despite its flaws.
September 18, 2018
For a book about a massive Edenic forest--it appears the the books, author, Brian Catling gets lost within the leaves into the follow-up to the impressive Vohrr.
The Vohrr was one of my favorite novels of the year when I read it--dense and almost impenetrable it consisted of many "non-submersible units". Images and characters that served in achors in a plot that was stormy and chaotic.
What's frustrating here now, is that all the characters I felt so invested in within the previous book often have little or no follow-up in this book. The world building gets too vast. While not as wide-ranging as the previous volume, it's largely a new cast of characters. For a new writer, it might be too ambitious of a task (very similar to what happened with Mark Danielewski's The Familiar series--cancelled way to early).
The first book was dream-like, while this one is plot driven without a lot of payoff. And this approach loses a lot of the lyricism and poetry the first book had.
I hope Catling has a genuine closing to the final volume and can successfully preen the weeds that started to flare up in this volume. It's got too much potential and promise within the premise to end up forgettable. This is why I generally refuse to read or watch serialized stories to their completion--to make sure they actually there and verify that it was worth the effort.
The Vohrr was one of my favorite novels of the year when I read it--dense and almost impenetrable it consisted of many "non-submersible units". Images and characters that served in achors in a plot that was stormy and chaotic.
What's frustrating here now, is that all the characters I felt so invested in within the previous book often have little or no follow-up in this book. The world building gets too vast. While not as wide-ranging as the previous volume, it's largely a new cast of characters. For a new writer, it might be too ambitious of a task (very similar to what happened with Mark Danielewski's The Familiar series--cancelled way to early).
The first book was dream-like, while this one is plot driven without a lot of payoff. And this approach loses a lot of the lyricism and poetry the first book had.
I hope Catling has a genuine closing to the final volume and can successfully preen the weeds that started to flare up in this volume. It's got too much potential and promise within the premise to end up forgettable. This is why I generally refuse to read or watch serialized stories to their completion--to make sure they actually there and verify that it was worth the effort.
September 6, 2019
In retrospect, it’s easy to see that the first volume of Brian Catling’s trilogy begins with a transformation of the feminine into the masculine. In the first, amazing scene, a dying priestess is transformed into a living bow – the very essence of the male symbol, derived as it is from Apollo as archer.
This second volume begins with the reverse. One of our male characters, discovering an abandoned infant, suddenly grows breasts in order to feed it. And we have, as well, our bow disintegrating itself into a cradle, reversing the gender implications of the original transformation.
Those opening chapters set a different tone, which changes things for a while. Then, like the first volume, this one is so magically bewildering that the tone changes throughout. We get some of the same characters back, some transformed, and we get some new ones.
I don’t think I could adequately summarize what takes place, but that’s the ultimate art of this work. Catling’s imagination is so broad, his concerns so varied, that it never settles into anything predictable. To that, I say, thank goodness. No single part of this is ever boring, and none seems entirely detached from the whole. Reading it as a perpetually unsettling experience, though, because it never hardens into something predictable and “finished.”
(In a review for locusmag – a review I’ve only started since it has spoilers for the final volume of the trilogy, Katharine Coldiron speaks of Catling making “rookie mistakes” in not answering all the questions he asks. With apologies for not yet having read all she has to say, I think she’s the one missing the point: this is fantasy unfettered. It’s fantasy that denies the fundamental mistake of the post-Tolkien genre. We’re seeing an imagination unfold into ever-new, ever newly possible alternatives. If this somehow ends with everything resolved, I’ll think it a deep betrayal. One of the major points of this is to remind us of the power of the weird. It’s not retelling some “high fantasy” kingdom’s escape from Armageddon with nothing changed but the names.)
In this case, Catling is concerned, among other things, with the warping effect of colonialism on the colonizers. The Limboia, the zombie-like figures needed to harvest the timber on which the city of Essenwald depends for its wealth, have been lost. A major thread here concerns our “healed” cyclops, Ishmael, as he sets out to help find them. In the harsh caste system of the place, he’s in-between. He isn’t fully “white,” but he’s been accepted by them as a lover and a servant, and he has hopes of achieving more.
We also have Gertrude, who has thought herself fully born of the timber barons’ caste. It turns out that her history is deeper, though. A bit like Ishmael, she is the product of a different genealogy – though fully accepted by her new family – which makes her encounters with the mechanical Kin all the more bewildering. She may be someone/something they’ve produced, and her daughter – eventually kidnapped – may have a powerful role to play in the forest of the Vorrh.
There’s also a newly introduced priest who, in a thread that’s haunting and still unfinished, is compelled by the young girl of the beginning to write a message with his own blood and flesh. As he writes, the letters draw a seething group of ants who bring them to life as they pass back and forth in the contours he has drawn. (Modest spoiler from the first few pages of the final volume that I have just begun: we meet the real-life intellectual Eugene Marais who’s book, Soul of the White Ant, may offer an explanation for ant behavior.)
And then there’s the new character, Hector Schumann, a Jew who’s come from Germany to interview various institutionalized figures whom he comes to think of as fallen angels, the Erstwhiles of the title who were supposedly called upon to guard the Tree of Knowledge in the Garden of Eden. Having failed in their duty, they’re a kind of abandoned group. They have nothing to do but fade slowly from the world.
One of those characters, Nicholas, has found a way to become something closer to human, though, and he and Hector become allies for inscrutable reasons. Eventually Hector has to hide out from an increasingly anti-Semitic German government, and he takes shelter with a Jewish gangster, “Rabbi” (an ironic title) Solly Diamond. And this whole plot-piece takes place a decade or more after the events in Essenwald without, so far, a clear connection between them.
I’m moving sideways with all that, recounting what happens but not effectively describing how it feels to experience it happening. That’s the joy of all this and, in the case of Nicholas, a clue to the origins and ambitions of Catling’s project.
Nicholas speaks often of his “Old Man,” the poet William Blake who was the first to encounter him after he awoke from almost two millennia sleeping below the Thames. (Does any of that quite make sense? Of course not. And that’s the magic.) In fact, the opening scene of the novel – and apparently the cover image – involve Blake interviewing and sketching Nicholas for his work.
Even before such an overt reference, I found myself tracing the Blakean influence here. Like Allan Moore’s Jerusalem (and, though we forget, like Tolkien himself) Catling is a kind of neo-Blake, someone intent on seeing beyond the world as it presents itself. As Blake put it famously, “If the doors of perception were cleansed, man would see things as they truly are: infinite.
That’s ultimately what this project strikes me as being about. Like Moore’s Jerusalem, it’s about consciously imagining an extra dimension to the world, about dreaming that we what we see is only the beginning of what our minds might apprehend. Katharine Coldiron – and Orson Scott Card and so many others who have big sales in the genre – want to imagine a world that, looking different from our own, ultimately answers to the same trajectory of narrative. Catling and Moore deliver something much more, something that leaves us feeling smaller for the glimpse we get of an imagined space so much larger than the world we know.
This second volume begins with the reverse. One of our male characters, discovering an abandoned infant, suddenly grows breasts in order to feed it. And we have, as well, our bow disintegrating itself into a cradle, reversing the gender implications of the original transformation.
Those opening chapters set a different tone, which changes things for a while. Then, like the first volume, this one is so magically bewildering that the tone changes throughout. We get some of the same characters back, some transformed, and we get some new ones.
I don’t think I could adequately summarize what takes place, but that’s the ultimate art of this work. Catling’s imagination is so broad, his concerns so varied, that it never settles into anything predictable. To that, I say, thank goodness. No single part of this is ever boring, and none seems entirely detached from the whole. Reading it as a perpetually unsettling experience, though, because it never hardens into something predictable and “finished.”
(In a review for locusmag – a review I’ve only started since it has spoilers for the final volume of the trilogy, Katharine Coldiron speaks of Catling making “rookie mistakes” in not answering all the questions he asks. With apologies for not yet having read all she has to say, I think she’s the one missing the point: this is fantasy unfettered. It’s fantasy that denies the fundamental mistake of the post-Tolkien genre. We’re seeing an imagination unfold into ever-new, ever newly possible alternatives. If this somehow ends with everything resolved, I’ll think it a deep betrayal. One of the major points of this is to remind us of the power of the weird. It’s not retelling some “high fantasy” kingdom’s escape from Armageddon with nothing changed but the names.)
In this case, Catling is concerned, among other things, with the warping effect of colonialism on the colonizers. The Limboia, the zombie-like figures needed to harvest the timber on which the city of Essenwald depends for its wealth, have been lost. A major thread here concerns our “healed” cyclops, Ishmael, as he sets out to help find them. In the harsh caste system of the place, he’s in-between. He isn’t fully “white,” but he’s been accepted by them as a lover and a servant, and he has hopes of achieving more.
We also have Gertrude, who has thought herself fully born of the timber barons’ caste. It turns out that her history is deeper, though. A bit like Ishmael, she is the product of a different genealogy – though fully accepted by her new family – which makes her encounters with the mechanical Kin all the more bewildering. She may be someone/something they’ve produced, and her daughter – eventually kidnapped – may have a powerful role to play in the forest of the Vorrh.
There’s also a newly introduced priest who, in a thread that’s haunting and still unfinished, is compelled by the young girl of the beginning to write a message with his own blood and flesh. As he writes, the letters draw a seething group of ants who bring them to life as they pass back and forth in the contours he has drawn. (Modest spoiler from the first few pages of the final volume that I have just begun: we meet the real-life intellectual Eugene Marais who’s book, Soul of the White Ant, may offer an explanation for ant behavior.)
And then there’s the new character, Hector Schumann, a Jew who’s come from Germany to interview various institutionalized figures whom he comes to think of as fallen angels, the Erstwhiles of the title who were supposedly called upon to guard the Tree of Knowledge in the Garden of Eden. Having failed in their duty, they’re a kind of abandoned group. They have nothing to do but fade slowly from the world.
One of those characters, Nicholas, has found a way to become something closer to human, though, and he and Hector become allies for inscrutable reasons. Eventually Hector has to hide out from an increasingly anti-Semitic German government, and he takes shelter with a Jewish gangster, “Rabbi” (an ironic title) Solly Diamond. And this whole plot-piece takes place a decade or more after the events in Essenwald without, so far, a clear connection between them.
I’m moving sideways with all that, recounting what happens but not effectively describing how it feels to experience it happening. That’s the joy of all this and, in the case of Nicholas, a clue to the origins and ambitions of Catling’s project.
Nicholas speaks often of his “Old Man,” the poet William Blake who was the first to encounter him after he awoke from almost two millennia sleeping below the Thames. (Does any of that quite make sense? Of course not. And that’s the magic.) In fact, the opening scene of the novel – and apparently the cover image – involve Blake interviewing and sketching Nicholas for his work.
Even before such an overt reference, I found myself tracing the Blakean influence here. Like Allan Moore’s Jerusalem (and, though we forget, like Tolkien himself) Catling is a kind of neo-Blake, someone intent on seeing beyond the world as it presents itself. As Blake put it famously, “If the doors of perception were cleansed, man would see things as they truly are: infinite.
That’s ultimately what this project strikes me as being about. Like Moore’s Jerusalem, it’s about consciously imagining an extra dimension to the world, about dreaming that we what we see is only the beginning of what our minds might apprehend. Katharine Coldiron – and Orson Scott Card and so many others who have big sales in the genre – want to imagine a world that, looking different from our own, ultimately answers to the same trajectory of narrative. Catling and Moore deliver something much more, something that leaves us feeling smaller for the glimpse we get of an imagined space so much larger than the world we know.
May 28, 2017
These books published by Brian Catling are a strange beast. They are too weird to ever become a great success and compete with mainstream epic fantasy series, but other artists hold them in high regard and they gather high praise. Catling is an artist in the modern art scene where he creates sculptures and does performance art, and only recently did he start writing books. So, when he suddenly burst into the scene a few years back, critics were amazed by his striking prose and feverish imagination. Catling’s artistic history in visual exhibitions shines through in his text, which is full of visual metaphors and striking images.
When reading his fantasy series about a mystical forest in Africa named the Vorrh, it is clear that Catling comes from a very different milieu than other fantasy writers. The novels are set in colonial times in which Europeans were wandering around Africa, and Catling connects the idea that Africa was the cradle of the human species with the idea that Eden from the book of Genesis can still be found deep within the heart of the Vorrh. Spooky African witchcraft leads to a tale full of ghost and mystical transformations, which is closer in theme to Ovid’s Metamorphoses than modern fantasy. Robert Holdstock’s Mythago Wood (1984) would make for a good comparison. The Erstwhile refers to fallen angels who failed to guard the tree of knowledge and are waking up and crawling out of the ground.
The Erstwhile (2017) follows closely upon The Vorrh (2012) and starts with a storm brewing over the Vorrh. Forces are moving and characters die and/or are resurrected. A particularly creepy scene early on transforms old storylines from The Vorrh about Peter Williams and Tsungali into a new beginning. Catling is fond of putting old artists into his novels, the way Dan Simmons puts old poets into his science fiction. In The Vorrh, the experimental photographer Eadweard Muybridge showed up, and The Erstwhile features the painter William Blake. Look up his painting of Nebuchadnezzar and you’ll recognize the cover of this novel. According to Catling, Blake based his painting on something mysterious.
Catling has strengths that are present again in this sequel. His prose is dense, full of strange similes, and he always aims for communicating complex emotional states. His characters are very sensitive to moods, changes of weather and the like. There are constant hints towards unseen forces that give his story a heavy mystical feel to it. It is best to read this slowly; take your time and savor the language and imagery. Reread paragraphs; it’s ok. Rush through it and the language is sure to frustrate you.
I love these novels and think that Catling is one hell of a writer, showing sheer delight in storytelling. The Estwhile meanders quite a bit in its telling because Catling just loves to establish his characters and locations before delivering the punch of a chapter. The result is meandering, but rich storytelling and a fountain of imagination. It is also bloody creepy at times, which gives the story a nice bite to it. And even though it is set in colonial times, Catling is far more interested in evoking a sense of the eerie and the unknown than to get bogged down in morality lessons.
The plot does not go anywhere fast. Catling is juggling a lot of storylines, so that even halfway through the novel he may switch to a character and I find myself thinking: "oh right, that was also going on!" But the story is mostly setting up new threads and taking the first new steps forwards. That makes this a typical middle book of a trilogy where the excitement of the introduction is already past, and threads twist and morph towards a new direction. What that direction is, is not entirely clear. But that can be said about the first book as well; Catling's plot reveals itself slowly, over time. At least, if there is one.
In the final quarter, the novel starts flagging. It lacks a nice wrap-up, a strong direction with a momentary climax. Catling presents a lot of great, spooky stuff in chapters that are well built-up in a Mervyn-Peake-kind-of painterly way. Yet, plot-wise, not enough happens. I am not happy about the gratuitous violence towards the end, and the last 100 pages leaves me confused about what happened with Catling’s story and his writing. Overall, this is a wonderful book with lots of memorable moments, but the second half left me deflated.
When reading his fantasy series about a mystical forest in Africa named the Vorrh, it is clear that Catling comes from a very different milieu than other fantasy writers. The novels are set in colonial times in which Europeans were wandering around Africa, and Catling connects the idea that Africa was the cradle of the human species with the idea that Eden from the book of Genesis can still be found deep within the heart of the Vorrh. Spooky African witchcraft leads to a tale full of ghost and mystical transformations, which is closer in theme to Ovid’s Metamorphoses than modern fantasy. Robert Holdstock’s Mythago Wood (1984) would make for a good comparison. The Erstwhile refers to fallen angels who failed to guard the tree of knowledge and are waking up and crawling out of the ground.
The Erstwhile (2017) follows closely upon The Vorrh (2012) and starts with a storm brewing over the Vorrh. Forces are moving and characters die and/or are resurrected. A particularly creepy scene early on transforms old storylines from The Vorrh about Peter Williams and Tsungali into a new beginning. Catling is fond of putting old artists into his novels, the way Dan Simmons puts old poets into his science fiction. In The Vorrh, the experimental photographer Eadweard Muybridge showed up, and The Erstwhile features the painter William Blake. Look up his painting of Nebuchadnezzar and you’ll recognize the cover of this novel. According to Catling, Blake based his painting on something mysterious.
Catling has strengths that are present again in this sequel. His prose is dense, full of strange similes, and he always aims for communicating complex emotional states. His characters are very sensitive to moods, changes of weather and the like. There are constant hints towards unseen forces that give his story a heavy mystical feel to it. It is best to read this slowly; take your time and savor the language and imagery. Reread paragraphs; it’s ok. Rush through it and the language is sure to frustrate you.
I love these novels and think that Catling is one hell of a writer, showing sheer delight in storytelling. The Estwhile meanders quite a bit in its telling because Catling just loves to establish his characters and locations before delivering the punch of a chapter. The result is meandering, but rich storytelling and a fountain of imagination. It is also bloody creepy at times, which gives the story a nice bite to it. And even though it is set in colonial times, Catling is far more interested in evoking a sense of the eerie and the unknown than to get bogged down in morality lessons.
The plot does not go anywhere fast. Catling is juggling a lot of storylines, so that even halfway through the novel he may switch to a character and I find myself thinking: "oh right, that was also going on!" But the story is mostly setting up new threads and taking the first new steps forwards. That makes this a typical middle book of a trilogy where the excitement of the introduction is already past, and threads twist and morph towards a new direction. What that direction is, is not entirely clear. But that can be said about the first book as well; Catling's plot reveals itself slowly, over time. At least, if there is one.
In the final quarter, the novel starts flagging. It lacks a nice wrap-up, a strong direction with a momentary climax. Catling presents a lot of great, spooky stuff in chapters that are well built-up in a Mervyn-Peake-kind-of painterly way. Yet, plot-wise, not enough happens. I am not happy about the gratuitous violence towards the end, and the last 100 pages leaves me confused about what happened with Catling’s story and his writing. Overall, this is a wonderful book with lots of memorable moments, but the second half left me deflated.
October 26, 2017
Do I feel any better after reading this than after the Vorrh?
No.
Have the characters grown more interesting, sympathetic, or at all likeable?
Not particularly.
Is the story still batshit, strange for the sake of strangeness, and largely directionless?
Certainly.
Did I enjoy reading it?
Eh... Enjoy is a heavy word.
Did I, however inexplicably, read this straight through, regularly and compulsively?
Sure did.
Do I care how the trilogy will end and expect any of it to be wrapped up in a rewarding way?
Goodness, no.
Will I read the third book when it comes out?
Yeah...
No.
Have the characters grown more interesting, sympathetic, or at all likeable?
Not particularly.
Is the story still batshit, strange for the sake of strangeness, and largely directionless?
Certainly.
Did I enjoy reading it?
Eh... Enjoy is a heavy word.
Did I, however inexplicably, read this straight through, regularly and compulsively?
Sure did.
Do I care how the trilogy will end and expect any of it to be wrapped up in a rewarding way?
Goodness, no.
Will I read the third book when it comes out?
Yeah...
Read
August 14, 2023very cool, not quite as cool as the vorrh, possibly just because once youve read about automatons raising a cyclops once it doesnt hit as hard the second time. also while the vorrh felt open ended in a way that didn't necessarily need conclusion, this one does very much feel like it's setting up things that will pay off in the third book. even though the literal actual roussel isnt a character in this book, big points are given for the wind powered adam taking a bite from the fruit of knowledge moving tableau guillotine which honestly might even be in impressions of africa originally
June 1, 2025
"His mind changed gears into a wordless rush of shapeless thoughts that were trying to seek each other out, to grip and attach, but instead they slid past and over each other in a milky, luminous torpor. He focused on the rainy night outside. A sliver of moon had risen above the dark slatted rooftops and smoking chimneys. It looked like a rent in the darkness, a slit into another world of gleaming light, a world that should be more alien than this. But tonight the fidelity of Hector's warm little reality had waned to a shadow."
December 16, 2023
Not as great as the first part. Halfway through I got a bit disinterested, a lot of half finished storyline or rushed storyline coming to a sudden halt. Also I get tired of the 'Germany in WWII' trope being inserted suddenly (and with nothing leading up to it/depending on it) as the "True Evil". Also a bit too much religious juxtaposition of Christianity - Judaism which is just not my interest.
April 19, 2022
3.25-5 for creativity alone. This series is so weird and I’m still not sure the overall plot, but I’m still somehow interested? I can’t even explain what happens in each book
September 26, 2025
well, i'm dumb, i didn't saw that it was a trilogy
so i was pretty lost troughout the book and even more at it's ending
but it makes sense as it the second one out of three
well it was still pretty good 👍
so i was pretty lost troughout the book and even more at it's ending
but it makes sense as it the second one out of three
well it was still pretty good 👍
April 18, 2022
I really enjoyed it but felt much smaller than the first book, and took me absolute ages to finish for some reason. Looking forward to the next book either way.
March 11, 2019
Having adored Catling’s The Vorrh, I had high hopes for it’s successor, The Erstwhile… but even weeks after finishing it, I am still terribly disappointed and confused. I think perhaps it may suffer from middle story syndrome (I believe it is to be part of a trilogy?) Absent was the thrilling writing that so captured my imagination in The Vorrh, and which urged me to re-read the same beautifully crafted passages over and over again, as the exquisite prose invited second, and–sometimes–third looks. In retrospect, perhaps it is possible that The Vorrh was one of those experiences where a memory of a thing is so much richer and more wonderful than the thing actually was? The Erstwhile picks up somewhat where The Vorrh leaves off, and the continued story is so wooden and dull, I may have even skipped over entire passages just to hurry the book along. I realize I haven’t told you much about the book, but what can you say when it is ultimately so unremarkable? Many of the same characters return in book two, and I recall thinking that these characters were so gorgeously imagined and although flawed, they were so terribly fascinating the first time around. In this second book, they just seem downright terrible. The titular beings, the Erstwhile, are the angels that failed to protect the Tree of Knowledge, and they are reawakening. They are truthfully the most interesting thing in this book read about, with their reconstitution of themselves and their evolution…but to what end? Their story never seems to go anywhere. What was their point? What was the point of this book, even? Perhaps Catlin has some end-game in mind that will become clear with the third installment in the trilogy. I will hold out hope.
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