Rotherweird: Rotherweird Book I

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You know what they say about judging books by their covers? Well, I did with these because they are lovely lovely covers! A twisted, arcane murder-mystery with shades of Hope Mirrlees, Ben Aaronovitch, Mervyn Peake and Edward Gorey at their disturbing best. A fantasy trilogy might seem an unlikely venture for a distinguished QC, but Andrew Caldecott has already tried his hand at drama, and received good notices. And on closer acquaintance, there are congruences between the first episode, Rotherweird and his day job. Though it resembles the love child of Gormenghast without the rancour, and Hogwarts without the rightful heir, it diverges from the usual fantasy templates. The pace of the novel also seemed a little … off. Especially in the first novel: the climax, which should have been iconic and dramatic as a range of plot threads wound together, just seemed a little rushed. A little brief. With an overly convenient invention dropped into the laps of the main characters. The company of quirky heroes are all rather passive: their most significant skills appear not to be combat or strategy but rather anagrams and crossword solving! The second book was more rounded, giving the female characters a little more space, and evened out the pace a little bit more – as well as (apparently) killing off a number of significant characters. At Rotherweird School, no history prior to 1800 can be taught, but in the North Tower highly profitable technologies, mostly with military applications, are developed. The world-class scientists are not incomers: the Rotherweird gene pool has been rich in talent, especially in the sciences, since the town was founded. So what happened 400 years ago? Are evil forces behind this quarantined concentration of intelligence? Somebody seems to think so.

But what of the bigger picture? If what happened 400 years ago was not magic but science, and that science is still horribly functional, is the rest of Elizabethan cosmology still the Standard Model in Rotherweird’s reality? (There must be some strange goings-on, in that particle physics lab in the North Tower!) The possibilities are intriguing. Unlike Hogwarts magic, science is not an isolated area. The changing Standard Model of what science is shapes the way we see the world. What other realities, that we have never imagined, populate the Rotherweird continuum? Maybe we’ll find out next time. This lends a certain haziness to the cast, despite the vivid descriptions; a quality reinforced by Caldecott’s restless, mayfly viewpoint. Frequently – though never in the spare, subtler “old history” sections, which gracefully unravel the town’s necromantic origins - I found myself yearning for more inner time with its inhabitants, particularly those caught in the story’s gnarlier moral nodes. I was also aware of Caldecott, a respected QC in media law with a string of high profile cases to his name – and what appeared to be a whimsical fantasy novel seemed an unexpected direction. Intrigued by the premise and author, excited by the cover art, I had high hopes….

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The town of Rotherweird stands alone – there are no guidebooks, despite the fascinating and diverse architectural styles cramming the narrow streets, theavant gardescience and offbeat customs. Cast adrift from the rest of England by Elizabeth I, Rotherweird’s independence is subject to one disturbing condition: nobody, butnobody, studies the town or its history.

Compared to the other books that are up there on my favourites shelve, this one made the cut because of very different reasons than the others. The Rotherweird trilogy stands out because it’s quirky, it has the most amazing cast of characters and it takes place in mysterious and enchanting surroundings. The one aspect that really took the cake from those is the characters. As we read on we get introduced to more inhabitants of Rotherweird and some of the countrysiders who live outside of the town’s walls. They all have their quirks and specific personality traits, but the author makes it really easy to connect with each and every one of them. Books that deal with a lot of characters can sometimes become confusing and although Rotherweird teetered on the edge of confusion sometimes, switching viewpoints from paragraph to paragraph, it didn’t bother me at all. On the contrary, to me this gave the book a sort of cinematic feel: jumping across town to our different characters and getting a glimpse of what they’re doing or thinking at that time. It highlighted the contrast of the different characters and made it all feel very real. There is something rather familiar within this strange concept. At times Lost Acre almost felt Edenic, especially as the various cages were hoisted into the mixing point by means of a handy tree. A tree of knowledge of good and evil, maybe.Rotherweird is twisted, arcane murder-mystery with shades of Deborah Harkness, Hope Mirrlees and Ben Aaronovitch, Mervyn Peake and Edward Gorey at their disturbing best. I found Wyntertide a little harder to immerse myself in than I did with Rotherweird, and it felt much slower in places. In many ways Wyntertide's purpose is to set the stage for what is to come, but it does more than simply bridge the gap, as the tension built steadily with each new revelation about their latest foe. Whereas book one has felt like very escapist fantasy, the political machinations in this outing held far greater resonance with those in our own version of England. As such, it was not a particularly relaxing listen, but nonetheless it was an engaging one, and whet my appetite for the final battle.