By Robert Holdstock
Mythago Wood entered the fantasy consciousness twenty-five years ago, the tragic tale of a repressed post-war family pulled apart by the mysterious Ryhope Wood, and it became an instant cult-classic. Ryhope itself is both ingenious and fascinating, on the outside it’s three square miles of ring-fenced ancient woodlands in Hertfordshire but it is a natural TARDIS, contact with human imagination reshaping it’s perimeter and pathways to impossible, impenetrable depths but also making flesh mythic creatures and ancient heroes, warriors and kings and bringing to life castles and cave-dwellings alike, bending time and space.
While he has returned to Ryhope Wood several times since, this is the first time he has written a direct follow-up to that first novel, but Avilion is not a sequel per se, rather it continues where Mythago Wood left off but then branches out on it’s own path. At the centre of Ryhope Wood, Steven Huxley and his mythago lover, Guiwenneth, live in the ruins of a Roman villa with their two children, Jack and Yssobel. The children are a mix of both human and mythago and have trouble balancing their ‘red’ and ‘green’ urges. Jack takes after his father, longing to discover ‘the outer world’, the one beyond Ryhope, while Yssobel takes after her mother and dreams of venturing to Ryhope’s heart, Avilion, place of resurrection.
The family live close to the haunted Iron Age fortress from which Guiwenneth’s myth stems, Steven having long since given up the idea of getting back to his own world and Guiwenneth happy and content in the protection of the villa with it’s crops and livestock. But the peace cannot last forever and events are conspiring against them. The hunters who protected the young Guiwenneth have returned to warn her of a forthcoming danger, Yssobel dreams constantly of her Uncle Christian, Steven’s brother, who disappeared into Lavondyss and Jack’s desperation to see ‘the outer world’ grows daily.
Avilion is a tale about growing up and moving on, or at least trying to move on and discovering your own peace, so it is with the younger generation that the the story of Avilion lies. Half-human and half-mythago Jack and Yssobel must each forge their own path through Ryhope, they must both come to terms with who they are through their dual and conflicting heritage but what makes this more interesting for the reader is that this time our view of the wood comes from insiders.
I wasn’t overly impressed with Avilion. Admittedly I haven’t read Mythago Wood and plenty of folks tell me that you have to have read it to understand parts of Avilion but I don’t think that’s the issue, at least not for me. While Ryhope is a fine device for a fantasy setting and it is without doubt beautifully written – Holdstock’s prose being vivid and emotive without being overly florid – ultimately, for me, there just wasn’t enough story to keep my attention and I found my mind wandering often during the reading.
Maybe it’s me, maybe I read so much fantasy that it takes something a bit more visceral, more immediate to grab my attention and Avilion is a undoubtedly a slower and more languid read than I would normally choose. For some though, it hits that sweet spot of brilliant fantasy, not for me, but I seem to be in a the minority on this one. Buy a copy, make up your own mind.
Avilion is published by Gollancz and is available from Play.com, Blackwell and all good book stores.