I thought this book was highly inconsistent and, in many parts, lacking.
The first chapter shows the promise of a concise, erudite short story that is unique in its conception and thoughtfully detailed; in other words, I think B. Catling proves himself capable of doing a lot better than he did. Then the rest of the book has great ideas, but they seem lackadaisically executed. Essenwald is a fascinating concept -- a city that feeds on a forest -- but the descriptions of it are highly generic. I wanted to know more about this place that sounds much like something you'd find on Geoff Manaugh's BLDBLOG, but we're not given the kind of specific, thoughtful details that make a setting tangible rather than a vague anyplace. The setting merely seems like feels like a weak mirror of present day or historic social, political and economic dynamics between city and industry. That's how I felt about most of the rest of the book: very interesting ideas, undeveloped.
I found it hard to care about the characters, and I didn't get the sense that the author cared that much about them, either. The cyclops, Gertrude, Cyrena, the frenchman... are all interesting, but that's like reading a miscellaneous piece of news in the papers and going "oh, interesting." I find them forgettable after I close the books. Most of the characters that populate the book seem incidental and not really relevant, which may be the point of surrealist art, but with an omniscient narrator and a story whose rasion d'etre is obscure, what is there to glean from scrutinizing the minute interactions between them? The only character who felt truly fleshed out is Muybridge, and I suspect this is because he is based on a real person. I know from writing fanfiction that it is far easier to write about a ready-made character, than to develop characters yourself to the point where they feel convincingly like real people. And maybe that's the problem here: the author is a better at writing about real events, real people, using real models for a place. It is not enough to imagine an interesting place like the Vorrh and call it done, for a setting to matter, it has to be fleshed out.
Yes, you can have a great novel with a generic setting and incidental characters, focusing instead on exploring a particular philosophy or scientific theory, or a single generic character's rich internal world. But the Vorrh is ostensibly about a place, and if the place is vague and elusive, then it must be through the character's adventures that we learn about it -- and the characters leave us little to learn.
The first chapter shows the promise of a concise, erudite short story that is unique in its conception and thoughtfully detailed; in other words, I think B. Catling proves himself capable of doing a lot better than he did. Then the rest of the book has great ideas, but they seem lackadaisically executed. Essenwald is a fascinating concept -- a city that feeds on a forest -- but the descriptions of it are highly generic. I wanted to know more about this place that sounds much like something you'd find on Geoff Manaugh's BLDBLOG, but we're not given the kind of specific, thoughtful details that make a setting tangible rather than a vague anyplace. The setting merely seems like feels like a weak mirror of present day or historic social, political and economic dynamics between city and industry. That's how I felt about most of the rest of the book: very interesting ideas, undeveloped.
I found it hard to care about the characters, and I didn't get the sense that the author cared that much about them, either. The cyclops, Gertrude, Cyrena, the frenchman... are all interesting, but that's like reading a miscellaneous piece of news in the papers and going "oh, interesting." I find them forgettable after I close the books. Most of the characters that populate the book seem incidental and not really relevant, which may be the point of surrealist art, but with an omniscient narrator and a story whose rasion d'etre is obscure, what is there to glean from scrutinizing the minute interactions between them? The only character who felt truly fleshed out is Muybridge, and I suspect this is because he is based on a real person. I know from writing fanfiction that it is far easier to write about a ready-made character, than to develop characters yourself to the point where they feel convincingly like real people. And maybe that's the problem here: the author is a better at writing about real events, real people, using real models for a place. It is not enough to imagine an interesting place like the Vorrh and call it done, for a setting to matter, it has to be fleshed out.
Yes, you can have a great novel with a generic setting and incidental characters, focusing instead on exploring a particular philosophy or scientific theory, or a single generic character's rich internal world. But the Vorrh is ostensibly about a place, and if the place is vague and elusive, then it must be through the character's adventures that we learn about it -- and the characters leave us little to learn.
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