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. 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.

A twisted, arcane murder-mystery with shades of Hope Mirrlees, Ben Aaronovitch, Mervyn Peake and Edward Gorey at their disturbing best.

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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. Rotherweird holds its own secret – which is revealed pretty early on in the first novel – which explains its prohibition against studying history: it contains a portal to Lost Acre, another realm or universe or plane of existence populated by monstrous creatures and containing a “mixing point” into which animals, plants and people can be sent to be merged together into grotesque forms. A collection of four stones placed in various places on a cage seem to be able to control the process and – in the sixteenth century – the mixing point is used by the gifted children to, variously, create monstrous familiars, to punish the recalcitrant and to grant power and longevity. 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.

While there is plenty to savour in this engrossing debut, some of Caldecott’s storytelling choices come at a cost. Occasionally, whimsy threatens to overwhelm – we’re told punning is one character’s forte, but actually it’s an occupational hazard for all Rotherweirders. Similarly, when we might expect anagram fiend Marmon Finch to solve a central mystery, it’s another character who does. 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.... Inexplicable feuds – “countrysiders”, who live outside the town walls, are despised – and charming eccentricities have sprung up during Rotherweird’s splendid isolation. A forest of Italianate towers rises above the rooftops and tangled alleys, linked by a network of walkways known as the Aether Way. Coracle racing on the turbulent river Rother is a local passion; the beer is so good, it’s dangerous; and the municipal gardener, Hayman Salt, is a genius at nurturing the strange and beautiful hybrids he finds in the Lost Acre – nothing like them has ever been seen in the outside world. The town is otherwise a typical heritage attraction, with picturesque festivals, an ancient church and an Elizabethan manor. It also has a fine, wonderfully carved building of the same vintage, Escutcheon Place, still occupied by the hereditary herald. But there are no tourists. 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. In its fantastical logic, Rotherweird is always coherent, but how it speaks to the non-fantastical is often sublime. It understands history and the perils of historical amnesia. While arguing for science, it delicately distils the ethical quandaries of tinkering with Nature, summoning the spectres of agribusiness, GM foods, deforestation and species extinction with allusive, devastating simplicity: "They do many things to living things."

Intricate and crisp, witty and solemn: a book with special and dangerous properties,’ Hilary Mantel For beneath the enchanting surface lurks a secret so dark that it mustneverbe rediscovered, still less reused. 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.