Brian Catling Books In Order

Publication Order of The Vorrh Trilogy Books

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Publication Order of Collections

Publication Order of Anthologies

Brian Catling
Author Brian Catling, born in 1948 in London, is a performance artist, poet, and sculptor that makes installations and paints egg tempera portraits of imagined Cyclops.

Brian began exhibiting his work on an international basis during the seventies. He’s been commissioned to make solo installations and performances in many countries that include Australia, Spain, Germany, Japan, Israel, Holland, Iceland, Greenland, Norway, and Denmark.

Brian was educated at North East London Polytechnic and the Royal College of Art. He is now a Professor of Fine Art at The Ruskin School of Drawing & Fine Art, University of Oxford, and a fellow at Linacre College.

For his “Vorrh” trilogy, he took inspiration from the imaginary forest of the same name in Raymond Roussel’s “Impressions of Africa” and the Vorrh is the backdrop to an epic fantasy/surrealist narrative that is lead by hunter Tsungali and the Cyclops, Ishmael. Also in The Vorrh are Raymond Roussel and Eadweard Muybridge, who are real life figures.

Brian’s debut novel, called “The Vorrh”, was released in the year 2012, and is the first of his “Vorrh” trilogy. His work is from the fantasy and nonfiction genres; he also writes as B Caitling.

“The Vorrh” is the first novel in the “Vorrh” series and was released in the year 2015. The Vorrh, it sits next to the colonial town of Essenwald and is a vast, potentially endless, forest. It is a place filled with angels and demons, or priests and warriors. Magical and sentient, the Vorrh bends time and it wipes memories. Legend has it that the Garden of Eden exists still and is located at its core.

Now, one renegade English soldier looks to be the first human to traverse its expanse. He starts his journey, armed with just an odd bow, however some fear the consequences of the man’s mission, and a native marksman has been selected to stop him.

Around all of them is a cast of characters that includes a Cyclops raised by some robots and a young girl with tragic curiosity, and some historical figures, like Edward Muybridge (photographer), Raymond Roussel, Sarah Winchester (the heiress). Fiction and fact are blended, the hunter’s going to become the hunted, and everybody’s fate hangs in the balance under the Vorrh’s will.

Few other books can rearrange the very molecules of your being, turning your eyes inside out the way that “The Vorrh” does, and it is simply a work of genius. The novel reads like a long-lost classic of Symbolist or Decadent literature with the exact same sense of timelessness. It is wildly imaginative, strange, unafraid to transgress and get lost, and is unlike anything a lot of readers have read.

“The Erstwhile” is the second novel in the “Vorrh” series and was released in the year 2017. In Germany and London, odd beings have been reanimating themselves. They’re the Erstwhile, the angels that failed to keep the Tree of Knowledge safe, and their reawakening are going to have some major consequences. In Africa, the colonial town of Essenwald’s fallen into disarray since the timber workforce vanished into the Vorrh. Now a team of specialists have been dispatched to locate them.

Led by Ishmael, the ex-Cyclops, they go into the forest, they go into the forest, however the Vorrh will not give em back so simply. Making things worse, an ancient guardian of the forest has got plans for Ishmael and his crew.

At the same time, a child of mixed race has been discovered abandoned in a remote cottage. Her origins aren’t known, however she’s got powers beyond even her own understanding. Conflict’s coming, as the human and inhuman, old and new are set on a collision course.

One more, blending the imagined with the real, this brings historical figures like William Blake and places like the Bedlam Asylum. Not to mention some ingenious creations like The Kin (a family of robots) together so they can create a novel of burials and births, vanishings and excavations.

Catling does a fantastic job of layering and expanding the established mythology of this world in exciting ways. He is a master of his poetic prose that feels like the only suitable way to tell these kinds of stories from the edges of the Vorrh. This magnificently weird novel lives up to the first book’s promise without feeling as though it is only a retread.

“The Cloven” is the third novel in the “Vorrh” series and was released in the year 2018. The colonial city of Essenwald gives up all of its secrets, while the ancient forest looks to reclaim what’s been taken away from it. Those that have been enslaved shall not be any longer, and two heroes that were believed to be dead are going to reemerge stronger than before. A man’s going to be split in two, and a young woman is going to rise to the very height of her powers.

At the same time, the threat of war is looming over London. Germany gears up to start the Blitz, and only Nicholas the Erstwhile senses this danger to come. Is he going to be able to save the man that saved him?

This is a book of betrayals and battles, where Catling’s great creations each fulfill their destinies and lead to one epic battle with the very fate of mankind hanging in the balance. All while the Vorrh attack the only thing humans can’t live without.

This is a glorious final chapter to an incredible trilogy. Brian’s surreal and nightmarish fantasy is brought to a shocking close in rapturous fashion. It may move quicker than its predecessors, but Catling keeps his poet’s eye affixed firmly on the path, all the while he pulls his readers in deeper and deeper into his wondrous and dark world of oddness. This novel doesn’t do what you might expect it to, but the two prior books didn’t either.

The entire trilogy is genius and crazy good. The books are surreal, nonsensical, gruesome, historic, and vast. The end of this one had some feeling triumphant about how things ended.