A review by snowmaiden
Mythago Wood by Robert Holdstock

5.0

When I started reading this book, I was afraid it wasn't going to turn out to be a fantasy after all. It starts out in England just after WWII, but instead of using the real-world situation as a mere pretext to quickly whisk the reader off to another land, as in Narnia or the Wizard of Oz or Alice in Wonderland, Holdstock spends the first half of the book immersing us in the narrator's history and lifestyle in the real world. I started to fear that this book would turn out to be like [b:The Wood Wife|463024|The Wood Wife|Terri Windling|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1312049409s/463024.jpg|1856525] or [b:Little Big|2612|The Tipping Point How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference|Malcolm Gladwell|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1344268476s/2612.jpg|2124255], where we only get tantalizing glimpses of creatures from the other realm and never go there ourselves. But then at the halfway point, things finally started happening, and they were all the more effective for our having been so deeply immersed in the quotidian details of Steven's life before. I guess the fantastic seems even more fantastic when contrasted with something real! I won't spoil the ending of the book except to say that it also surprised me greatly. Now I can't wait to read the sequel.