---
product_id: 14489212
title: "The Vorrh (The Vorrh Trilogy)"
price: "HK$302"
currency: HKD
in_stock: true
reviews_count: 10
url: https://www.desertcart.hk/products/14489212-the-vorrh-the-vorrh-trilogy
store_origin: HK
region: Hong Kong
---

# The Vorrh (The Vorrh Trilogy)

**Price:** HK$302
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- **What is this?** The Vorrh (The Vorrh Trilogy)
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- **Where can I buy it?** [www.desertcart.hk](https://www.desertcart.hk/products/14489212-the-vorrh-the-vorrh-trilogy)

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## Description

desertcart.com: The Vorrh (The Vorrh Trilogy): 9781101873786: Catling, Brian: Books

Review: THE VORRH stands alone in my memory of fantasy novels. - By page 34 we learn all about this thing called THE VORRH: "For years it was said that nobody had ever reached the centre of the Vorrh. Or, if they had, then they had never returned.... It was the mother of forests; ancient beyond language, older than every known species, and, some said, propagator of them all, locked in its own system of evolution and climate. The banded foliage and vast trees that breathed its rich air offered much to humans but could also devour a thousand of their little lives in a microsecond of their uninterrupted, unfathomable time. So vast was its acreage, it also made its demands of time, splitting the toiling sun into zones outside of normal calibration; a theoretical traveler, passing through its entire breadth on foot, would have to stop at its centre and wait at least a week for his soul to catch up. So dense was it breathing, it dented the surrounding climate. Swirling clouds interacted with its shadow. Its massive transpiration sucked at the nearby city that fed from it, sipping from the lungs of its inhabitants and filling the skies with oxygen. It brought in storms and unparalleled shifts of weather. Sometimes it mimicked Europe, smuggling a fake winter for a week or two, dropping temperatures and making the city look and feel like its progenitor. Then it spun winds and heat to make the masonry crack after the tightness of the impossible frost... All its pathways turned to overgrowth, jungle, and ambush. The tribes that were rumoured to live there were barely human -- some said the anthropophagi still roamed. Creatures beyond hope. Heads growing below their shoulders. Horrors." [34] So begins a very unusual, dense and complex, beautifully written, fantasy/alternate history novel. This immense, mysterious forest called THE VORRH is the focal point of the novel, the point around which all the various stories and characters revolve. Catling fills his novel with a myriad of characters, some historical, some not. In some cases their paths cross, in others, not. There is Edward Muybridge (1830-1904) the famous English photographer and creator of the zoopraxiscope -- who hasn't seen his galloping horse photos? And William Gull (1816-1890) English physician to the Prince of Wales and Queen Victoria, and also a real suspect in the Jack the Ripper slayings in Whitechapel (though this fact isn't part of the book). There is also the Frenchman, Raymond Roussel (1877-1933), poet and novelist who wrote "Impressions of Africa" (and actually mentions the Vorrh) -- it is reported that Roussel's book was the inspiration for THE VORRH. To this cast of historical characters is added: Peter Williams, an enigmatic Englishman, veteran of the Great War trenches, possessed of a magical bow constructed from the physical remains of Irrinipeste, a woman of the True People. The arrows he shoots guides him through the Vorrh; Tsungali, a strange, scarified native who years before had started the Possession Wars, now hunts Williams to prevent him from venturing through the Vorrh; Ishmael, a young cyclops boy, raised by robots in the basement of an otherwise abandoned house, with supplies delivered by Sigmund Mutter; two women, Cyrena Lohr, and Ghertrude Tulp, both in love with Ishmael, but for different reasons. These, and many other characters make up THE VORRH. At the edge of the Vorrh, stands the colonial city of Essenwald, moved there brick by brick by brick from its original location in Europe. Here many of the characters live, die, pass through. Essenwald survives on the timber of the Vorrh, carefully harvested from the periphery, for no one dare spend too much time in the Vorrh -- it erases your memory and drives men mad. The harvesting is done by slaves, the Limboia, an apparently hollow and soulless race. Whether they are born that way, or it is the Vorrh which made them that way, is not clear. What shines in THE VORRH above all else, above all the dizzying number of characters and plot lines, is Catling's sensuous, dreamlike prose. One reviewer said it the best: Catling didn't so much write THE VORRH, as paint it. THE VORRH stands alone in my memory of fantasy novels. I've never read anything quite like it.
Review: Magnificent, disgusting, disappointing. - Expect to the impressed with the quality of the writing. Expect to be disgusted by what happens in this story. Expect not to have an answer at the end. This book is worth reading for the journey it puts you through, not in search of answers. Actually, that is the point of the book. If you look for definitive purpose in this book, you are just like the fools who think knowledge can be found on a tree in the center of The Vorrh. Instead, you will find an endless mire.

## Technical Specifications

| Specification | Value |
|---------------|-------|
| Best Sellers Rank | #165,789 in Books ( See Top 100 in Books ) #2,420 in Paranormal Fantasy Books #3,691 in Action & Adventure Fantasy (Books) #5,646 in Literary Fiction (Books) |
| Book 1 of 3  | The Vorrh Trilogy |
| Customer Reviews | 4.0 4.0 out of 5 stars (1,126) |
| Dimensions  | 5.46 x 1.06 x 8.26 inches |
| ISBN-10  | 1101873787 |
| ISBN-13  | 978-1101873786 |
| Item Weight  | 13.6 ounces |
| Language  | English |
| Print length  | 512 pages |
| Publication date  | April 28, 2015 |
| Publisher  | Vintage |

## Images

![The Vorrh (The Vorrh Trilogy) - Image 1](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/71QuriKQzvL.jpg)

## Customer Reviews

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ THE VORRH stands alone in my memory of fantasy novels.
*by M***N on July 10, 2015*

By page 34 we learn all about this thing called THE VORRH: "For years it was said that nobody had ever reached the centre of the Vorrh. Or, if they had, then they had never returned.... It was the mother of forests; ancient beyond language, older than every known species, and, some said, propagator of them all, locked in its own system of evolution and climate. The banded foliage and vast trees that breathed its rich air offered much to humans but could also devour a thousand of their little lives in a microsecond of their uninterrupted, unfathomable time. So vast was its acreage, it also made its demands of time, splitting the toiling sun into zones outside of normal calibration; a theoretical traveler, passing through its entire breadth on foot, would have to stop at its centre and wait at least a week for his soul to catch up. So dense was it breathing, it dented the surrounding climate. Swirling clouds interacted with its shadow. Its massive transpiration sucked at the nearby city that fed from it, sipping from the lungs of its inhabitants and filling the skies with oxygen. It brought in storms and unparalleled shifts of weather. Sometimes it mimicked Europe, smuggling a fake winter for a week or two, dropping temperatures and making the city look and feel like its progenitor. Then it spun winds and heat to make the masonry crack after the tightness of the impossible frost... All its pathways turned to overgrowth, jungle, and ambush. The tribes that were rumoured to live there were barely human -- some said the anthropophagi still roamed. Creatures beyond hope. Heads growing below their shoulders. Horrors." [34] So begins a very unusual, dense and complex, beautifully written, fantasy/alternate history novel. This immense, mysterious forest called THE VORRH is the focal point of the novel, the point around which all the various stories and characters revolve. Catling fills his novel with a myriad of characters, some historical, some not. In some cases their paths cross, in others, not. There is Edward Muybridge (1830-1904) the famous English photographer and creator of the zoopraxiscope -- who hasn't seen his galloping horse photos? And William Gull (1816-1890) English physician to the Prince of Wales and Queen Victoria, and also a real suspect in the Jack the Ripper slayings in Whitechapel (though this fact isn't part of the book). There is also the Frenchman, Raymond Roussel (1877-1933), poet and novelist who wrote "Impressions of Africa" (and actually mentions the Vorrh) -- it is reported that Roussel's book was the inspiration for THE VORRH. To this cast of historical characters is added: Peter Williams, an enigmatic Englishman, veteran of the Great War trenches, possessed of a magical bow constructed from the physical remains of Irrinipeste, a woman of the True People. The arrows he shoots guides him through the Vorrh; Tsungali, a strange, scarified native who years before had started the Possession Wars, now hunts Williams to prevent him from venturing through the Vorrh; Ishmael, a young cyclops boy, raised by robots in the basement of an otherwise abandoned house, with supplies delivered by Sigmund Mutter; two women, Cyrena Lohr, and Ghertrude Tulp, both in love with Ishmael, but for different reasons. These, and many other characters make up THE VORRH. At the edge of the Vorrh, stands the colonial city of Essenwald, moved there brick by brick by brick from its original location in Europe. Here many of the characters live, die, pass through. Essenwald survives on the timber of the Vorrh, carefully harvested from the periphery, for no one dare spend too much time in the Vorrh -- it erases your memory and drives men mad. The harvesting is done by slaves, the Limboia, an apparently hollow and soulless race. Whether they are born that way, or it is the Vorrh which made them that way, is not clear. What shines in THE VORRH above all else, above all the dizzying number of characters and plot lines, is Catling's sensuous, dreamlike prose. One reviewer said it the best: Catling didn't so much write THE VORRH, as paint it. THE VORRH stands alone in my memory of fantasy novels. I've never read anything quite like it.

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐ Magnificent, disgusting, disappointing.
*by A***N on March 10, 2016*

Expect to the impressed with the quality of the writing. Expect to be disgusted by what happens in this story. Expect not to have an answer at the end. This book is worth reading for the journey it puts you through, not in search of answers. Actually, that is the point of the book. If you look for definitive purpose in this book, you are just like the fools who think knowledge can be found on a tree in the center of The Vorrh. Instead, you will find an endless mire.

### ⭐⭐⭐ Not for me.
*by K***R on June 17, 2015*

It is probably a very well written and very interesting Victorian era fantasy novel. Really, the characters are well fleshed out, the plot has twists and turns and it's a good mix of magic and Victorian era science. So if you're into that sort of thing, great! The language, at times, almost becomes a character. It changes depending on the setting and what character is being narrated. That was interesting, but very inconsistent. It seemed like I could tell it "meant" something, but I couldn't really determine what or why. So in the end it only added confusion. But.... me... well, I kept waiting for the steam-punk type stuff to show up, it never did. I kept waiting for a character to rise that I could either identify with, or like, it never came or was so minor in comparison to the whole that it wasn't enough to keep my interest. I didn't feel like working (yes, reading it felt a bit like work) through the stories of characters I really didn't like at all, to get to the parts with the characters I did like. Usually, a book like this establishes a set of narratives which start off being separate, and part of the enjoyment of reading the story is seeing those narratives slowly converge to a focal point and sometimes eventually merge... this... not really, there was no feeling or progression. i had a hard time with this book. I just didn't "get it", and it certainly didn't get me.

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