Rotherweird by Andrew Caldecott – Review

Published: July 30, 2019

Publisher: Jo Fletcher Books

Series: Rotherweird #1

Genre: Fantasy

Pages: 480 (Hardcover)

My Rating: 4.0/5.0

A copy of this book was provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

Synopsis:

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 to be revered–and feared.

Four and a half centuries later, 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: no one, but no one 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…

Rotherweird was, well, kind of weird. I was expecting an unusual book though so that wasn’t a problem at all and I ended up enjoying it quite a bit by the end. When I sat down to type this up I tried to think of a quick and dirty way to summarize what the book was about but it was pretty difficult. The best I could come up with was that it’s about an odd little village with an odd school and a doorway to another world. And there’s magic. This is probably one of the worst summaries I’ve ever done but it is what it is, right?

I initially had some trouble immersing myself in the story though as I pushed onwards I got into the groove of things. The book does switch between two different timelines – present and several centuries ago when Rotherweird and its unusual school was initially founded. The story was intriguing enough that despite my initial “meh” feeling towards the book I really, really wanted to see how things panned out. It ended up being quite good and I think it’s a series that I’ll continue reading when they become available in the US.