Deep Wheel Orcadia

This has been one of my most anticipated releases of the year ever since I saw it mentioned in The Bookseller.

A space odyssey science fiction novel written in the Orcadian dialect in the form of an epic poem, if this isn’t enough to sell it to you read on.

Since I’m of a certain age and Scottish my first read of this was in the way it was originally set out, as an epic poem in Orcadian, and? For the most part I could understand what was written and in this form it was really satisfying, only rarely having to pop down to see the english translationinterpretationmeaning of the words used.

I then read the story in the english translationinterpretationsense and loved the way some Orcadian words were set down in this version and did think that this was the only way it could really be done.

Finally I scanned the Orcadian several times to get the rhythm of the words, then read it aloud and honestly this felt the beast way of interacting with the text. you got the strength of certain passages and lines, some words got greater strength from being spoken aloud. It really feels like a story that should be shared at night with friends.

Apart from all that it is a brilliant science fiction story, with good characterisation considering how little text there actually is in the end.

Well worth the chance on something different.