The Vorrh

Jeff Vandemeer and Alan Moore love this book, which should have been a clue right there as to how weird it is. Oh the back cover mentions cyclops, robots, ghosts, and a not quite empty Eden all embedded in colonial Africa with a cast of fictional and factual characters muddled together like a stirred parfait, but it's weirder than that. In the first fifty pages, I had no idea what was going on. After 100, I thought I had an idea. After 150, I rejected that idea and just sort of kept going to the end when I had less of an idea.

It's easy to compare this book to Vandemeer's Southern Reach, but the latter had a very science fiction feel to it while The Vorrh is more mystic and fantastical. Maybe it's that element that made it harder for me to process all of the weirdness without much context, but the endings (and I pluralize that on purpose) didn't give me a whole lot of satisfaction. There's a core of a “be careful what you wish for,” “Don't eat the apple” story here, but I would have liked a little more foundation on which to ground some of the more bizarre characters.

I don't think it's a series I'll continue, but it certainly kept me thinking and guessing through the whole thing.