The Rotherweird Trilogy – Andrew Caldecott

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.

For beneath the enchanting surface lurks a secret so dark that it must never be rediscovered, still less reused.

But secrets have a way of leaking out.

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.

Slickstone and Oblong, though driven by conflicting motives, both strive to connect past and present, until they and their allies are drawn into a race against time – and each other. The consequences will be lethal and apocalyptic.

Welcome to Rotherweird!

Review

Because I basically binged all three books in the Rotherweird Trilogy last month I decided to review all three of them together. I will however try my best to keep it spoiler free so you can read this review even if you haven’t read any of the books yet. As you might be able to tell from the very first sentence of this review, I absolutely loved these books. I couldn’t stop reading and just had to find out what happened next. It’s very rare for me to read a series one book after the other as I usually get a bit of series fatigue and have to slot in another book to cleanse the palate a little bit. Not with Rotherweird! I never got bored and never even thought about putting the series down for another book. 

Compared to the other books that are up there on my favourites shelve, this one made the cut because of very different reasons than the others. The Rotherweird trilogy stands out because it’s quirky, it has the most amazing cast of characters and it takes place in mysterious and enchanting surroundings. The one aspect that really took the cake from those is the characters. As we read on we get introduced to more inhabitants of Rotherweird and some of the countrysiders who live outside of the town’s walls. They all have their quirks and specific personality traits, but the author makes it really easy to connect with each and every one of them. Books that deal with a lot of characters can sometimes become confusing and although Rotherweird teetered on the edge of confusion sometimes, switching viewpoints from paragraph to paragraph, it didn’t bother me at all. On the contrary, to me this gave the book a sort of cinematic feel: jumping across town to our different characters and getting a glimpse of what they’re doing or thinking at that time. It highlighted the contrast of the different characters and made it all feel very real. 

The story itself is … rather weird (see what I did there?). In a good way! We get introduced to modern day Rotherweird through the eyes of the new Modern History teacher: Oblong. 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. Oblong is immediately curious about his predecessor and what happened to him. According to the few people in town he meets, the previous Modern History teacher did a faux-pas, mentioning pre-1800s history, and then promptly vanished. This, the arrival of another outsider and an alarming change of the climate in a mysterious place called Lost Acre all lead to the unravelling of the secret that is the history of Rotherweird. 

The story of Rotherweird is an elaborate puzzle that the reader is invited to solve together with the characters. Throughout the books more puzzle pieces are added, changing the image you thought you were making or adding a crucial part to better understand the picture as a whole. The puzzle pieces come from clues pieced together by the characters and from flashbacks to when Rotherweird was first established. In the last book, Lost Acre, the puzzle reaches completion and we can finally see the finished image, the whole story, the whole history of Rotherweird. 

I’m a sucker for a good puzzle and this one was magnificent. I enjoyed every minute of it and like every entertaining puzzle I’d be happy to reduce it back to pieces and start it all over again. Even though I now know what the completed image looks like, I’m sure I’ll have just as much fun piecing the whole thing together again throughout the three books. The Rotherweird trilogy is full of mystery, action, interesting villains, quirky characters and fun. Highly recommended! 

Release Date: June 16th, 2017 (Rotherweird), May 31st, 2018 (Wyntertide), May 16th, 2019 (Lost Acre)
Publisher: Jo Fletcher Books
Age Group: (Young) Adult
Pages: 452 (Rotherweird), 496 (Wyntertide), 400 (Lost Acre)
Format: Paperback (Rotherweird and Wyntertide), Hardback (Lost Acre)
Source: Received from the publisher in exchange for an honest review