Book Review: Rotherweird
Hey, backstage means that this year, you also get to see what I'm reading!
On Sunday, I will also be posting a roadmap (of sorts) of what I hope to have published in 2021. New year, lots of writing to do!
Anyway. On to the first book of 2021! My goal is to read 100 books this year. (Well, log 100 books this year. I'm sure I normally read around 100 but I always forget to keep track).
BOOK TITLE: Rotherweird
AUTHOR: Andrew Caldecott
DESCRIPTION OF BOOK COVER: The title Rotherweird is designed as something that looks like a sign centered across an old-fashioned style map of the town of Rotherweird. The River Rother curves around the bottom of the town with the author’s name in a banner over the top. The color palatte is red for the title and border and black and white for the map.
GENRE: Fantasy, Historical Fiction, myth/folklore
PAGES (optional): 452
BLURB:
1558: 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.
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.
Then an Outsider arrives, a man of unparalleled wealth and power, enough to buy the whole of Rotherweird – deeply buried secrets and all…
WELCOME TO ROTHERWEIRD
I give this book 3 stars out of 5
***
I got Rotherweird as a Christmas gift from my uncle who has a gift for finding books that I never would have gotten for myself. Rotherweird does not much deviate from this trend and true to the name of the town, it’s rather weird!
I’d say it’s almost a cross between Welcome to Nightvale, in that it covers several characters in a small town and all the shenanigans they get into, and English folklore with some Neil Gaiman sprinkled in. It’s very much a book that you will either enjoy for its weird atmosphere or you will not like at all because its very weirdness demands that, much like the town rules, you suspend all expectations and niceties of the 21st century and descend into something much stranger, older, and stricter. Sometimes eerie and creepy, sometimes silly and fantastical, and always a little dense to read due to the language used, this is a book that sticks, not in your mind’s eye, but rather in the hindbrain, coiling out at unexpected moments with strange imagery.
The book crosses between two time periods: the 16th century when Rotherweird was founded and when it closed itself to the world (And why) and the present day where the main characters are conspiring to learn why Rotherweird is what it is and why a rich Outsider wants the town so badly. The somewhat main character is a history teacher who has been told under no circumstances to teach history prior to 1800 and to never try to uncover the history of Rotherweird. The other characters are trying to figure out what’s going on in their town, why they are being bought out and have other motivations such as revenge and preservation.
It's definitely a strange story and it’s the first in a trilogy, so don’t expect all the answers right away.
On my personal note: I sometimes found this book a little hard to read simply because it moved from surreal and silly to rather gruesome, often in the space of twenty or thirty pages. The motivations of some of the characters were somewhat obscure and you really, really have to suspend a lot of logical thinking. Somehow or other this town has dodged things like internet, mobile phones, and automobiles and yet the youth are fabulously intelligent (Though we don’t see them much after the first third of the book). They sell weapons and goods to the outside world, but are not influenced by the outside world. You really have to buy into the conceit of the book to derive any enjoyment of it and if you cannot, you won’t have any patience for it.
And for some reason, the parts that take place in the past are written in the present tense whereas the stuff written in the present are written in past tense. I still have no idea why the author chose to do that, but it was unique.
The Good: An interesting atmosphere and an interesting concept. I liked several of the characters and the Other area was interesting.
The Bad: You have to suspend the hell out of belief to buy in. Also, we never really see the gifted children of the present day and in fact, only about a third of the book has anything to do with the school that the main character is hired into (and of that, I think we spend maybe twenty-five or thirty pages at the school. Maybe). I think the author could have chopped the school right out and no one would have noticed, to be honest. Maybe it becomes more important in the other two books?
If you enjoy books like Welcome to Nightvale and you can immerse yourself in an atmosphere without questioning it too much, you may enjoy Rotherweird. For myself, while I read it, I don’t feel particularly inclined to read the other two, at least not at this point.
Cheers!
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