Rotherweird: Rotherweird Book I

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Each character has their own slippery patch too; a soft spot leaving them vulnerable to manipulation. Snorkel and Strimmer, Aggs and Trimble, Finch and Ferdy, Valett and Fanguin… the list continues and is helpfully added to the novel as a dramatis personae in the front. 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.

Two inquisitive outsiders have arrived: Jonah Oblong, to teach modern history at Rotherweird School ( nothing local and nothing before 1800), and the sinister billionaire Sir Veronal Slickstone, who has somehow got permission to renovate the town’s long-derelict Manor House. 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. This lends a certain haziness to the cast, despite the vivid descriptions; a quality reinforced by Caldecott’s restless, mayfly viewpoint.You don’t need Sasha Laika’s gorgeously naive illustrations to visualise the eponymous river island town, with its drawbridge and portcullis, tottering high-rise oak-and-plaster towers. Lost Acre, Rotherweird Trilogy, Book 3by Andrew Caldecott is our third and final visit to this fantastical realm. The puzzle pieces come from clues pieced together by the characters and from flashbacks to when Rotherweird was first established. I have enjoyed several other audiobooks that he has narrated, but will now forever associate his familiar tones with the eccentric inhabitants of Rotherweird. However, whilst it is not perfect, I did enjoy Rotherweird enough to launch straight into Wyntertyde once I had finished it!

deeply impressive debut' by Nick Curtis in the Evening Standard and 'Vivid and absorbing and grapples with big ideas without being dry, difficult or patronising' by Sarah Hemming, in the Financial Times, but informed by his love of history, which he studied at New College, Oxford, he was seized by the notion of a city-state hiding a cataclysmic secret: the result, Rotherweird. The hub of innovation and artistry that birthed "the educated Elizabethan mind" which so delights Rotherweird's beguiling ninja-physicist, Vixen Valourhand? Slickstone and Oblong are only the first of a plethora of quirky and oddly-named characters who people Rotherweird. Rotherweird’s town and valley are not so much a lost world as a lost gated community, comfortably ensconced in a quiet corner of rural England. Which also says something about the post-Christmas reading slump in which I often find myself in January.

T he kind of book that is so glorious you'll want to talk to your friends about it for days afterwards . 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.

And as a narrative, the outsider entering a different world and needing everything explained to him is a familiar and useful enough conceit – think Harry Potter entering Hogwarts, perhaps. As such, it was not a particularly relaxing listen, but nonetheless it was an engaging one, and whet my appetite for the final battle. With more twists and turns than a game of Snakes and Ladders played on a helter-skelter, it requires one's full attention.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? He is the embodiment of a gangly, clumsy, misunderstood, accidentally intelligent man that tries to be the knight in shining armour but ends up being the naïve but benign sidekick. His play Higher than Babel was described as "impressive" by the FT and "a bold debut" by the Independent. While there is plenty to savour in this engrossing debut, some of Caldecott’s storytelling choices come at a cost. Rotherweird is twisted, arcane murder-mystery with shades of Deborah Harkness, Hope Mirrlees and Ben Aaronovitch, Mervyn Peake and Edward Gorey at their disturbing best.