Following on from The Vorrh, the second instalment in the surreal cult trilogy sees the setting move from the African jungle to old Europe, and quiet comedy come to the fore

Brian Catling is a poet and sculptor who published his remarkable 2015 novel, The Vorrh, in his late 60s. It is a fantastical work in the tradition of what is sometimes called “the new weird”. The Vorrh of the title is a primeval, unmapped jungle in the centre of Africa which may or may not be the location of the original Garden of Eden. With the second world war looming, it is now inhabited by monsters and exploited by colonial capitalists. It drives mad most who venture into it, whether seeking profits or prophets. The book has a classic quest structure, and encompasses historical figures such as the novelist Raymond Roussel and the photographer Eadweard Muybridge; it reads like Joseph Conrad trying to interpret a Max Ernst painting. It is also the first part of a prospective trilogy; The Erstwhile is the promised continuation.

The middles of trilogies are difficult things, a balancing act between closure and continuation. The middle can’t just tread water, nor can it wholly deliver. In the right hands, this very balance can be elliptically tantalising. The Erstwhile almost revels in its status as the hiatus between Genesis and Apocalypse. It applies the sleight of hand that many of the best middle-books do, for a shift of focus. Although there are still scenes set in Africa, the prime interest moves to old Europe.

Some characters persist from the first book. We still have the former cyclops Ishmael Williams (I never thought I would put together the words former and cyclops in any sentence, but that’s the nature of Catling’s viscously surreal prose), along with the Bakelite robots, a kind of steampunk homage, who educated him in the first volume. As his narrative progresses Ishmael returns to the Vorrh, and a former foe is able to leave the forest.

Catling has an eye to the wry, to the momentous absurdity of just being a thing made of flesh in a world that is not

Outside the imitation European city which parasitically thrives on the Vorrh, a lonely local woman finds a buried child that is miraculously still alive and takes it to the priest. Water shudders off the child as he tries to baptise her. She grows abnormally, and has an unrevealed mission of her own. Meanwhile, in Germany in the 1920s, emeritus professor of theology Herman Schumann is dwindling in a grace and favour retirement home. There he is asked to look at two vaguely anthropomorphic “specimens” retrieved from the Vorrh. His encounter leads him to London, where there is a similar specimen, one that can tell him much more. We discover that the “angels” – are they? Who knows? – whom God appointed to guard the Vorrh are slowly returning to consciousness and have a message for humanity.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest In praise of the cyclops … Brian Catling Photograph: David Tolley

Schumann’s quest to understand these slowly awakening angels allows Catling to loop around a lot of signs and symbols which have been used previously in the Iain Sinclair, Peter Ackroyd, Will Self and JG Ballard versions of alt-London. William Blake makes an appearance, as do Yiddish theatre, guillotines, radios that transmit from the future, premonitions of Shoah on Brick Lane, and a Ripper rumour. Some of this is part of a shared mythology of English esoterica. It’s no wonder that Sinclair, Alan Moore and Michael Moorcock have enthused over these books: Catling is using the same raw materials they do, but in a different manner.

What comes as a contrast here to the first volume is a quiet comedy, while the eeriness swirls in the background. This volume is as much Ealing Studios as James Ensor. Parts of Ishmael’s story evoke John Buchan and Erskine Childers and Anthony Hope, all swashbuckle and smarmy charm. Even in the most extreme moments Catling has an eye to the wry, to the momentous absurdity of just being a thing made of flesh in a world that is not. In something as fluorescently psychedelic as this novel and its predecessor, the reader still requires an affective hook; and in Schumann’s explorations of why the past seems clearer to the elderly than the future, we get just that.

The different narrative strands converge but do not conclude, and there is an ambiguous denouement for one of the characters. Another has a revelation that will surely be of major significance for the final volume – an answer to his question, “If the tree of knowledge was not meant for men or angels, who was it made for?” The theological and the ecological have been twinned throughout the first two books: I wonder if they will survive the conflagration of the third.

• The Erstwhile is published by Coronet. To order a copy for £15 (RRP £20) go to bookshop.theguardian.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £10, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of £1.99.