The mystery of Ryhope Wood, Britain's last fragment of primeval forest, consumed George Huxley's entire, and long, life. Now, after his death, his ...
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Feb 03, 2012
Jason
rated it: 
5 Stars
This will now sit in my all time favorite shelf as it an amazing piece of literary fiction, which just happens to be a fantasy. I am not going to summarize the story as much better reviewers than I have already done so, many times before. This nearly 30 year old novel that was first published in 1984, by Robert Holdstock, is still relevant today. I want to reiterate that this is truly a piece of literature first and a novel of fantasy second. It would sit better on the shelve More...
This will now sit in my all time favorite shelf as it an amazing piece of literary fiction, which just happens to be a fantasy. I am not going to summarize the story as much better reviewers than I have already done so, many times before. This nearly 30 year old novel that was first published in 1984, by Robert Holdstock, is still relevant today. I want to reiterate that this is truly a piece of literature first and a novel of fantasy second. It would sit better on the shelve More...
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Nov 25, 2011
Dulac3
rated it: 
What a great read! Holdstock managed to come up with something completely new and incredibly old at the same time with his Mythago Wood series. By mining the rich vein of British myth and tying it to both the Jungian subconscious and the magical influence of an acient living forest he managed to create a fantasy work that was both epic in scope and personal in its resonance. It's a work that truly stands the test of time.
In the first volume, _Mythago Wood_, we follow the story of St More...
In the first volume, _Mythago Wood_, we follow the story of St More...
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Mar 22, 2010
Kat
rated it:
After his post-WWI convalescence in France, Steven Huxley is returning to his family's home on the edge of Ryhope Wood, a patch of ancient forest, in Britain. For as long as Steven remembers, his father, who recently died, had been so obsessed with the forest that it destroyed their family.
Upon returning home, Steven finds that his brother Christian is quickly following in their father's footsteps -- both figuratively and literally -- for he has also discovered that this is no ordina More...
Upon returning home, Steven finds that his brother Christian is quickly following in their father's footsteps -- both figuratively and literally -- for he has also discovered that this is no ordina More...
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Jul 01, 2010
Stephen
rated it:
6.0 stars. This book is a MASTERPIECE and will likely be on my list of "All Time Favorite" novels before too long (though I always try and wait a little while after reading the book to see how long it stays with me).
In brief, the story revolves around a primeval forest that has survived intact since the Ice Age (if not before) and where archetypes of Man's universal myths and legends exist and the story of one family's exploration of this forest over two generations.
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In brief, the story revolves around a primeval forest that has survived intact since the Ice Age (if not before) and where archetypes of Man's universal myths and legends exist and the story of one family's exploration of this forest over two generations.
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(19 people liked it)
Dec 03, 2011
Isa
rated it:
x-posted to http://troubadourcottage.blogspot.com/
This book was a breath of fresh, country air. The prose is simple, unadorned. The psychological tension between the three main characters in the first half - Stephen, Christopher and the presence of their dead father poisoning the air between them - is masterfully claustrophobic. The woodland, the smell of the earth, the green creepers and vines and crumbling edifices are described with the deepest love for and knowledge of the English More...
This book was a breath of fresh, country air. The prose is simple, unadorned. The psychological tension between the three main characters in the first half - Stephen, Christopher and the presence of their dead father poisoning the air between them - is masterfully claustrophobic. The woodland, the smell of the earth, the green creepers and vines and crumbling edifices are described with the deepest love for and knowledge of the English More...
Aug 18, 2011
Sandy
rated it:
The late Robert Holdstock's 1984 offering, "Mythago Wood," was first brought to my attention by two trusted sources. The novel was chosen for inclusion in British critic David Pringle's "Modern Fantasy: The Hundred Best Novels" as well as Jones & Newman's overview volume "Horror: 100 Best Books." Pringle calls the book "fresh and ingenious," while no less a fantasy/horror expert than Michael Moorcock, writing in the Jones & Newman volume, uses such words a
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May 04, 2011
Jared
rated it: 
What starts as an intriguing concept begins to unravel due to poor pacing and plotting.
The premise of this one is really, really high-concept and it is thus:
A family lives near an ancient 'old-growth' wood. This is a small forest that has existed since medieval times and even back before that. The father, a scholar, is obsessed with the wood and often disappears for weeks at a time to plumb its depths. Why he is gone for that long is a mystery to his family because, yo More...
The premise of this one is really, really high-concept and it is thus:
A family lives near an ancient 'old-growth' wood. This is a small forest that has existed since medieval times and even back before that. The father, a scholar, is obsessed with the wood and often disappears for weeks at a time to plumb its depths. Why he is gone for that long is a mystery to his family because, yo More...
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Jan 04, 2011
Hev
rated it:
My dog ate it. I had just got to the part where the protagonist's brother returns from a stint in the forest. I absently laid the book open face-down on top of the dog's night time crate (terrible way to treat your books boys 'n' girls) and went to bed. I came down the next morning to find that the little...darling had been grabbing at it through the bars all night. Consequently the thicker section, the part I had yet to read, had been reduced to a doilie-type affair, the delicate confetti on th
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Jan 09, 2010
Lee Ann
rated it: 
I'm not quite sure how I feel about Robert Holdstock's Mythago Wood. I borrowed it from the library because Neil Gaiman tweeted about Holdstock's passing and this book in November 2009.
While it was an interesting read, but I didn't quite get it. In the beginning of the book I found myself a little spooked and mystified by the mythagos and Ryhope Wood. Part of my confusion may stem from the edition I read, which was the book club one and the book jacket's synopsis reversed the ch More...
While it was an interesting read, but I didn't quite get it. In the beginning of the book I found myself a little spooked and mystified by the mythagos and Ryhope Wood. Part of my confusion may stem from the edition I read, which was the book club one and the book jacket's synopsis reversed the ch More...
May 28, 2009
Terran
rated it:
This was a loaner from a London friend, and my first introduction to "mythic fantasy". I found it fascinating and compelling.
Very quickly, the story surrounds a family in Britain, c. end of WWI, and their interactions with the strange, ancient woodland on their property. Like so many other fantasy places, their wood is much bigger on the inside than out. Unlike many other fantasy environments, it's not a particularly nice place.
As you pass deeper into this wo More...
Very quickly, the story surrounds a family in Britain, c. end of WWI, and their interactions with the strange, ancient woodland on their property. Like so many other fantasy places, their wood is much bigger on the inside than out. Unlike many other fantasy environments, it's not a particularly nice place.
As you pass deeper into this wo More...
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Jan 26, 2009
Geoffrey
rated it:
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers.
To view it, click here
Dec 02, 2008
whalesister
rated it:
Interesting, weird. Definitely a guy story--for one thing the romance doesn't work for me at all--and, both because the main character is an adult, and because of some mature subject matter, I would say a fantasy for adults, not teens. Interesting use of archetype/myth; I felt slung into the realm of the subconscious, and I'm not sure I wanted to be there. Finishing the book feels like waking up from a bizarre dream. Artistically well-done, although I felt way too distant from any of the charac
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Dec 01, 2008
Cera
rated it:
What a peculiar book.
I read this when it first came out, which means I was about 9 or 10, and didn't understand it at all, although I remember that I really, really liked the ending. Reading it now, I have the oddest push-pull with it; I want to push it away because the narrative voice is so unattractive, so unemotional, so distant and uninviting -- and yet the story that the narrator is telling really ought to be interesting. Maybe it is interesting -- or is it? You see my confus More...
I read this when it first came out, which means I was about 9 or 10, and didn't understand it at all, although I remember that I really, really liked the ending. Reading it now, I have the oddest push-pull with it; I want to push it away because the narrative voice is so unattractive, so unemotional, so distant and uninviting -- and yet the story that the narrator is telling really ought to be interesting. Maybe it is interesting -- or is it? You see my confus More...
Jan 11, 2010
Lowed
rated it:
"To attempt to write a straightforward synopsis of Mythago Wood itself is almost to lose the very essence of the novel, to break away from the ethereal feeling which transcends the book."
That one I got from a reviewer from somewhere, to excuse myself from making a lengthy review of this book. I know, I just read the book last December 2009. For being a late reader of the fantasy genre, I tried to check wikipedia for the books that received high praises from the previous dec More...
That one I got from a reviewer from somewhere, to excuse myself from making a lengthy review of this book. I know, I just read the book last December 2009. For being a late reader of the fantasy genre, I tried to check wikipedia for the books that received high praises from the previous dec More...
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Feb 01, 2010
Jim
rated it:
I would classify this book as high concept fantasy. Certainly, it is not to everyone's taste. I can sympathize with this, as sometimes I feel like I admire this book more than enjoy it.
Holdstock works through a lot of interesting ideas. The title Mythago Wood refers to a stand of West Midlands primeval forest that, like the TARDIS, is bigger within than without. The forest has an aura that interacts with the mytho-creative aspects of people's minds to produce mythagos, which are exp More...
Holdstock works through a lot of interesting ideas. The title Mythago Wood refers to a stand of West Midlands primeval forest that, like the TARDIS, is bigger within than without. The forest has an aura that interacts with the mytho-creative aspects of people's minds to produce mythagos, which are exp More...
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Oct 20, 2009
Kit
rated it:
I read this book once before, years ago, and didn't really remember it. It turned out to be a good book for me to read because I'm interested in telling a story that uses some historical documents as part of the telling. In looking more closely at how this book was structured, especially with the journal entries, letters, and legends told in mind, I discovered another level of meaning. It's a story about story-telling, about the power of myth and legend and its importance in our lives. The wood
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Sep 25, 2009
Hannah
rated it:
This was my first (explicit) fantasy novel and I think it's just not my genre. I enjoyed big parts of it, especially in the first half of the book, but towards the ending (during the entire final quest) I had to force myself to read on. I liked the idea of a magical forest that's much bigger than it actually is, in the middle of modern England, and even the idea of the mythagos - but the parts that were actually set in the forest didn't appeal to me at all. I'm not saying this is a bad book, tho
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May 26, 2011
Milla
rated it:
This turned out not to be my favourite book of all time but I still liked it well enough. The idea of the wood itself, building representations of past people's hopes and fears, is tempting. It seems like the fantasy-version of the next step in storytelling. Where in sci-fi you have holodecks, in fantasy you have Mythago Wood. In a funny way the story is actually quite relevant -- 3D, augmented reality and other such developments are trying to offer a similar immersion in stories all the time. I
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Sep 02, 2011
Sienna
rated it:
Whew. Feel like I've been buffeted by the winds of time, the long history of storytelling and, um, some of Jung's acolytes after picking this one up from the library yesterday. Though Mythago Wood has its flaws, it's also compulsively, page-turningly delicious, and Holdstock's eerie ghostwood more than makes up for the romantic relationship's lack of credibility. I struggled with the myth imagos: are they, as suggested, universal archetypes shaped by the minds of individuals near the wood, a
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Dec 28, 2011
Jules
rated it:
Absolutely fantastic! This book is up there in my top 5 books of all time!
I first read this book as a teenager back in the 80s. I remember curling up on the sofa with it during a weekend of beautiful weather. It was so good I stayed on that sofa all weekend until I'd finished it and missed the first good weather weekend since the previous summer! I've reread it several times & enjoyed it every time. It prompted me to seek out the wood for real when I was on holiday in Kent and also p More...
I first read this book as a teenager back in the 80s. I remember curling up on the sofa with it during a weekend of beautiful weather. It was so good I stayed on that sofa all weekend until I'd finished it and missed the first good weather weekend since the previous summer! I've reread it several times & enjoyed it every time. It prompted me to seek out the wood for real when I was on holiday in Kent and also p More...
May 05, 2010
Tony
rated it: 
Oh man. I've been saving this one for years. I'd read such good stuff about it. Up there with Tolkien. Part of a LOR - Earthsea triumvirate. A family figures out how to get into an old forest in England that contains the mythic patina of the entire island in the form that's sort of extracted from their minds -- but that can kill them and love them, etc. Kind of halfway intriguing for a while, and then it turns into what may as well be a march through a reference book on English folklore.
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Aug 24, 2010
Jim
rated it:
This really is a marvellous book - unputdownable, I ended up reading this into the wee small hours a few nights in a row. Sort of a folk legend fantasy novel - geared towards adults (for a change).
The story centres on Ryhope Wood and the Huxley family living on its border. The wood is a beautifully realised concept. Holdstock writes well, slowly building up a dark and fascinating picture of the wood, never revealing anything more than what Stephen Huxley knows, which is very little i More...
The story centres on Ryhope Wood and the Huxley family living on its border. The wood is a beautifully realised concept. Holdstock writes well, slowly building up a dark and fascinating picture of the wood, never revealing anything more than what Stephen Huxley knows, which is very little i More...
Aug 30, 2010
David
rated it:
"Mythago Wood" é uma história emocionante sobre um bosque primordial que tem o poder de criar mitagos: representações tridimensionais de personagens antropomórficas e teriomórficas, imaginadas pela mente humana. Quanto mais próximos do centro do bosque se encontram os mitagos, mais crus, enérgicos e primitivos são. "Mythago Wood" está cheio de trunfos: para começar, está muito bem escrito; depois, aquilo que poderia ser uma amálgama caricatural de personagens conhecidas dos m
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Dec 09, 2011
ruby
rated it:
I'm not sure I can say I liked this book. But the story engaged me. I read the last half in a night. And I find myself thinking about it in the down moments of the day.
It seems, at first, to be just another Cthulu-mythos tale. A man returns to his childhood home to find that his father's obsession with the ancient wood beside the family home has become his brother's obsession as well. Strange folk appear at the gate. There is a sense of menace and madness.
However, the story turns in an More...
It seems, at first, to be just another Cthulu-mythos tale. A man returns to his childhood home to find that his father's obsession with the ancient wood beside the family home has become his brother's obsession as well. Strange folk appear at the gate. There is a sense of menace and madness.
However, the story turns in an More...
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Jun 28, 2009
Susan
rated it:
This is really a 3.5. I know there's discussion about adding 1/2 stars to ratings, but I don't see an option here. I was going to give it 4, but it seems that since I'm decent at picking books to read that I'll enjoy, *everything* is coming out 4 stars :).
This is an incredibly original mythic fantasy world. The worldbuilding is lyrical and compelling. I had trouble staying engaged, however, due to the prose style. It's almost all written in a very detached, summary fashion. (Th More...
This is an incredibly original mythic fantasy world. The worldbuilding is lyrical and compelling. I had trouble staying engaged, however, due to the prose style. It's almost all written in a very detached, summary fashion. (Th More...
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Oct 13, 2009
Craig
rated it:
Mythago Wood (pronounced mith-AH-go) came highly recommended, but I found the rotting forest setting of this contemporary English fantasy claustrophobic. The protagonist, "Steve" is not developed beyond a revenge quest avatar.
The story has an interesting premise: When Steve Huxley enters the small, mysterious woodland near his estranged father's lodge, the forest becomes immense, warping time and space. The wood produces 'mythagos'-- the individual's manifestations of my More...
The story has an interesting premise: When Steve Huxley enters the small, mysterious woodland near his estranged father's lodge, the forest becomes immense, warping time and space. The wood produces 'mythagos'-- the individual's manifestations of my More...
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Aug 01, 2011
Ruth
rated it:
c1984. Well! How ghoulish am I. I decided to give this one a go because of some rave reviews on some book blogging sites together with a news update of the author's death. This book made me feel very inadequate....I simply didn't get the "bigger picture". I did enjoy the style of writing - especially at the beginning - but I just was unable to connect the dots. I knew I was in trouble when I opened the book and read the preface by Brian Aldiss - "phylogeny presides over ontogeny"
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Apr 19, 2011
X
rated it:
I think someone called this a "dream like" book. I would say more nightmare-ish. The idea of mythic figures living in a magical forest is quite nice at first, but once the mythagos actually showed up (materializing out of the "real" characters' subconsciousness), I found them threatening and frightening in a ghostly way. The numerous stories-within-a-story grew tiresome, though they did add to the mythic feel of the book. I never really felt like I "knew" the charac
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Dec 04, 2011
Martin
rated it:
Mysterious, haunting, and unexpected, the glory of reading Mythago Wood is how we start from a place of reality -- a firm ground that slowly dissolves in an unexpected fantasy in the heart of Rhyope wood. And who can say if one becomes lost there, if you lose all desire to leave as you become entrenched in the secret, savage wood, populated with archetypes and myths known as mythagos. The central characters are two brothers who find themselves drawn deeper into the wood and imprisoned by their o
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Aug 06, 2011
Nicholas
rated it:
http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/1759289.ht...
I think the only other Holdstock novel I had read was the rather odd one about Newgrange spirals turning up on another planet, probably thirty years ago. This is an intense exploration of inner space via an English countryside wedded to past historical periods, and the narrator's own family history of venturing into, and being transformed by, this particular unknown. I felt reading it that I have read both Aldiss and Priest trying to do someth More...
I think the only other Holdstock novel I had read was the rather odd one about Newgrange spirals turning up on another planet, probably thirty years ago. This is an intense exploration of inner space via an English countryside wedded to past historical periods, and the narrator's own family history of venturing into, and being transformed by, this particular unknown. I felt reading it that I have read both Aldiss and Priest trying to do someth More...
