Fantasy Masterwork of the Week: Mythago Wood

Our current Fantasy Masterwork of the Week is a book that is very special to the team at Gollancz. Not only is it an utterly extraordinary piece of work, a deserved winner of the World Fantasy Award (in both its novel and novella incarnations) and the defining depiction of the wildwood in modern literature – and make no mistake, it is all those things – but it was written by our greatly-missed friend Robert Holdstock.

Welcome to Mythago Wood . . .

Deep within the wildwood lies a place of myth and mystery, from which few return, and of those few, none remain unchanged.

Ryhope Wood may look like a three-mile-square fenced-in wood in rural Herefordshire on the outside, but inside, it is a primeval, intricate labyrinth of trees, impossibly huge, unforgettable… and stronger than time itself.

Stephen Huxley has already lost his father to the mysteries of Ryhope Wood. On his return from the Second World War, he finds his brother, Christopher, is also in thrall to the mysterious wood, wherein lies a realm where mythic archetypes grow flesh and blood, where love and beauty haunt your dreams, and in promises of freedom lies the sanctuary of insanity…

Mythago Wood is available as a Fantasy Masterworks paperback and an SF Gateway eBook. You can find more of Robert Holdstock’s work via his Author page on the SF Gateway, and read about him in his entry in The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction.