Rotherweird: Rotherweird Book I

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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, the avant garde science and offbeat customs. Cast adrift from the rest of England by Elizabeth I, Rotherweird’s independence is subject to one disturbing condition: nobody, but nobody, studies the town or its history. Disturbing omens multiply: a funeral delivers a cryptic warning; an ancient portrait speaks; the Herald disappears - and democracy threatens the uneasy covenant between town and countryside. Geryon Wynter's intricate plot, centuries in the making, is on the move. Everything points to one objective - the resurrection of Rotherweird's dark Elizabethan past - and to one date: the Winter Solstice. Wynter is coming.... A twisted, arcane murder-mystery with shades of Hope Mirrlees, Ben Aaronovitch, Mervyn Peake and Edward Gorey at their disturbing best. Then an Outsider arrives, a man of unparallelled wealth and power, enough to buy the whole of Rotherweird - deeply buried secrets and all . . .

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Then an Outsider arrives, a man of unparallelled wealth and power, enough to buy the whole of Rotherweird – deeply buried secrets and all . . . I would recommend this book to people who enjoyed the first two books in the series, Rotherweirdand Wyntertide, as it is too intricately-scripted to work as a stand-alone. You know what they say about judging books by their covers? Well, I did with these because they are lovely lovely covers! Am I playing with the dog or is the dog playing with me?” Of course, Montaigne wrote that of a cat, but I prefer dogs.”

Nestedness is woven into the book’s fabric in an almost Escherian way, evoking Tudor astrolabes, or diagrams of atomic structures. Secrets reveal secrets reveal secrets. Rotherweird, a hidden world, is full of buildings themselves hiding false ceilings and mysterious compartments. Crucially, it is a gateway to an even more hidden domain – Lost Acre – accessed by lodestones and populated by chimeric monstrosities. In turn, Lost Acre guards its own secret nucleus, a patch of “slippery sky” – a quantum, alchemical wormhole which wreaks havoc or miracles, depending on who’s using it. 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. Nothing More Than a Press Strategy": Johnny Depp Loses Libel Suit Appeal". Vanity Fair. 25 March 2021 . Retrieved 12 March 2022.

Perhaps that’ll happen. Rotherweird is only the start of a trilogy. Call me greedy, but I’m already itching to return to Caldecott’s universe – those crazy towers, those flawed nubs of humans, and, most of all, those entrancingly poignant, beautiful-ugly metamorphs. 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. However, whilst it is not perfect, I did enjoy Rotherweird enough to launch straight into Wyntertyde once I had finished it! Which also says something about the post-Christmas reading slump in which I often find myself in January. The third book, LostAcre, is apparently due to be released in May 2019 and, yes, I will be keeping an eye out for it. Now I know most of the characters.

Think of it as an adventure,’ replied Boris breezily, ‘good for the CV and impressing the fair sex.” 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. Twelve children, gifted far beyond their years, are banished by their Tudor queen to the town of Rotherweird. Some say they are the golden generation; some say the devil’s spawn. But everyone knows they are something to be revered – and feared. 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.

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Campbell lawyers demand 'sensitive' approach". The Guardian. 18 February 2004 . Retrieved 12 March 2022. Four and a half centuries on, cast adrift from the rest of England by Elizabeth I and still bound by its ancient laws, Rotherweird’s independence is subject to one disturbing condition: nobody, but nobody, studies the town or its history.