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A review by rebeccacider
Mythago Wood by Robert Holdstock
Mixed feelings about this one. The first section is one of the most atmospheric dark fantasies I've had the pleasure of reading. The slow progression of horror, of being simultaneously engulfed by a malevolent wood and by the legacy of a parent, is genuinely haunting.
The rest of the novel was inventive, but exchanges much of the psychological horror for a more linear adventure narrative. There's an interesting character study embedded here - Stephen is Guiwenneth; she is his anima. Likewise, the monsters that populate Ryhope Wood are aspects of a man whose childhood and war experience have left him deeply scarred. But Stephen never fully acknowledges the parallels between the wood's landscape and his internal landscape; till the end he views the mythagos as creatures to conquer or possess rather than externalized aspects of his psyche. If his lack of self-awareness was meant to be an indictment of the character, it was too subtle to register with this reader.
Nevertheless, Ryhope Wood was quite a setting. I don't think I've read another work that fully captured the experience of stumbling upon a ruin in the woods and feeling as if you've been transported into the past, or into a dream. The Celtic and pre-Celtic elements are robust, although the fixation with "folklore as historical record" felt dated, and the whole "racial memory" thing is cringeworthy, if on brand for a 1940s setting.
On the whole an imperfect novel, but certainly succeeds as a work of imagination.
The rest of the novel was inventive, but exchanges much of the psychological horror for a more linear adventure narrative. There's an interesting character study embedded here - Stephen is Guiwenneth; she is his anima. Likewise, the monsters that populate Ryhope Wood are aspects of a man whose childhood and war experience have left him deeply scarred. But Stephen never fully acknowledges the parallels between the wood's landscape and his internal landscape; till the end he views the mythagos as creatures to conquer or possess rather than externalized aspects of his psyche. If his lack of self-awareness was meant to be an indictment of the character, it was too subtle to register with this reader.
Nevertheless, Ryhope Wood was quite a setting. I don't think I've read another work that fully captured the experience of stumbling upon a ruin in the woods and feeling as if you've been transported into the past, or into a dream. The Celtic and pre-Celtic elements are robust, although the fixation with "folklore as historical record" felt dated, and the whole "racial memory" thing is cringeworthy, if on brand for a 1940s setting.
On the whole an imperfect novel, but certainly succeeds as a work of imagination.