Mythago Wood

A little bit of Narnia here, a bit of Carl Jung there but most of all a big chunk of real life myths...

One of the most original fantasy novels I've read when it comes to world building. A secret realm is one of the common tropes but I've never seen it done in this way. It's basically our world but some of the forests are sort of magical. So old that time itself warps. So old that ice age has never ended there. So old that these forests have their own will. Mythago Wood is one of them and we explore it in this tale of two brothers - Steven and Christian.

The novel is split into three acts and act two was the best in my opinion. The beginning intrigued me but I wanted to kind of move on to “the good stuff”. We just scratch the surface there, don't even enter the forest proper. Then there's a lovely romance of act two that is fated to not end well - not a spoiler they say it outright. This was my favorite part of the book. Very lovely. I'm not into romances but this worked well for me.

I was looking forward to the third and longest act as we finally go explore the forest but unfortunately it dragged too long. There was a moment where main character does a dumb thing which leads to low key action scene just for the sake of something actually happening. It took me three days to read the last 50 pages. The ending also isn't done that well. The conclusion with the villain was very disappointing. I don't know what the author was aiming for. There are some Christian themes (pun intended) but then Holdstock subverts readers' expectations in one of the worst ways possible. I think I'm too dumb to understand what he aimed for maybe? Not read well enough in classic literature or myths? I don't know...

I do feel that if there were multiple POVs or if it was written in third person instead of first, the novel would benefit. The prose felt a bit sterile. Maybe it's to do with Czech translation. The entire series is not available in physical form in English language at the moment so I broke my rule and read it translated as Czech publisher is releasing the whole series in pretty nice illustrated hardcover edition.

Nevertheless, the book as a whole is definitely worth a read and Holdstock deserves a bit more fame for what he had created here. I hope he expands the world in later novels as it was a bit underutilized here. A brief walk through the expanse that is out there. From what I read the best is yet to come in Lavondyss. I'm also pretty sure that without Mythago Wood there would be no American Gods. Gaiman even wrote the introduction for this novel as Holdstock's friend and fan.

I have read and reread this book. Every time I take away something a little different. It hasn't received the “popularity” that many other excellent books have, but I think that's what makes this such a gem. This book takes me to a whole other world. It is raw and harsh. If I had to pick only one book from my bookshelf to save from a fire, it would be this book.

This is not a bad book. I would have rated it three stars if I could have withstood finishing it, but I just can't keep going with a book I'm hoping to finish so I can read something more interesting. The last straw came when I realized that this isn't the whole story anyway, and the story will continue in the sequel, Lavondyss. For the purposes of recommendations on Goodreads then, I'm rating it as “didn't like it that much.”

The real problem is that despite winning the World Fantasy Award, this book is not really fantasy. It's somewhere to the left of magical realism. It's not even “portal fantasy” as the genre understands the term today. It thoroughly takes place in our world and never really leaves it. It's full of mythical stories and characters based on a fairly simple premise: there is a woodland in England that has never been penetrated and it interacts with the psyche of those nearby to produce heroic characters of myth like King Arthur and Robin Hood. shrug This is all presented in a psychoanalytic framework that I'm sure would mean more if I'd dug more into the symbolism, but I feel like I've kind of outgrown that and would just like to read something either fun or more interesting.

And it's not more interesting because it's written in a literary style that is quite distant and unengaging despite the simplicity of the story.

Basically, this is the kind of book that has been winning the World Fantasy Award since its inception in 1975. Look at the list of winners for best novel: hardly any of them are “fantasy fantasy,” except Shadow of the Torturer by Gene Wolfe, or perhaps one win by Michael Moorcock (which I haven't read). Almost every winner of the award is a book that takes place in our world with some minor supernatural elements. Technically fantasy, but not what most people think of as “fantasy.” It's just more of an indication that “Winner of the World Fantasy Award” on the cover means more that it's a particular kind of book, in a particular style, rather than indicating that it's a good book. I just can't keep reading when I've got good genre fiction scratching at my door.

Mythago Wood, a beguiling adult fantasy novel, concerns the power of myth, the eternal stories passed down from generation to generation, hidden in the deep recesses of the human mind.

Two brothers, Christian and Steven, grow up in a house on the edge of Ryhope Wood. Their father is obsessed by the wood and its secrets, the so-called Mythagos that populate it and the secret pathways to the very heart of the forest. After World War 2, Steven, wounded in France and reluctant to return home, returns after the death of their father to find his brother prematurely aged and similarly obsessed. It turns out that he had fallen in love with the Mythago of a girl, Guiwenneth, a Celtic warrior woman of legend, but it had ended tragically. The obsession makes him believe that the Wood can conjure up the girl again....

So begins the struggle between the two brothers for the love, or possession, of Guiwenneth, and the secrets of Ryhope are slowly revealed. When Christian kidnaps the version of Guiwenneth that has fallen in love with Steven, a pursuit into the depths of the forest begins. Steven is accompanied by the burned pilot, Keeton, and Holdstock takes us deep into the heart of the forest, through epic, mythic landscapes of the mind, vast landscapes that cannot possibly fit into the small English wood called Ryhope. Yet Ryhope is a place where the ancestral myths come alive again, the Neolithic Shamen, the tribes that roamed Britain in prehistory, Romans, Saxons, Medieval Knights....they all appear. All the stories of heroism and tragedy, of gods and giants, of doomed love and redemption, they all play out in the forest, drawn from the minds of the human beings travelling through it.

It's a grown up novel of love, loss and obsession. A magical, beautifully written book deeply rooted in British myth echoing back down the years from the end of the last Ice Age.

The denouement plays out with the inevitability of legend but leaves threads dangling for Holdstock to pick up in later novels. A beautiful novel.