Glancing at a few reviews before reading this I could see that this was one of those books that was polarizing - some people love it, many people don't. I had nibbled on this many years ago but never got going. Gave the book away after it sat on my shelf a long time. Always felt a little guilty about not tackling what I thought was a classic of '80s fantasy. It won the World Fantasy award in 1985. I saw a nice copy recently and picked it up. Started reading it and liked the premise, even if everything is more than a little murky. Large bits of this are incomprehensible mixed with stuff one can understand and be drawn into. Maybe one needs to be more knowledgeable of myths beyond Arthur and Robin Hood to have an appreciation for what is going on in the book. I like the idea of this small ancient forest that has survived since the last ice age but all the strange mental myth creation or whatever it is was just weird.

Read some of the reviews if you are curious. I have a hard time trying to describe this but overall I am glad I read it, but couldn't quite enjoy the strangeness of it all. ( )

Mixed feelings about this one. The first section is one of the most atmospheric dark fantasies I've had the pleasure of reading. The slow progression of horror, of being simultaneously engulfed by a malevolent wood and by the legacy of a parent, is genuinely haunting.

The rest of the novel was inventive, but exchanges much of the psychological horror for a more linear adventure narrative. There's an interesting character study embedded here - Stephen is Guiwenneth; she is his anima. Likewise, the monsters that populate Ryhope Wood are aspects of a man whose childhood and war experience have left him deeply scarred. But Stephen never fully acknowledges the parallels between the wood's landscape and his internal landscape; till the end he views the mythagos as creatures to conquer or possess rather than externalized aspects of his psyche. If his lack of self-awareness was meant to be an indictment of the character, it was too subtle to register with this reader.

Nevertheless, Ryhope Wood was quite a setting. I don't think I've read another work that fully captured the experience of stumbling upon a ruin in the woods and feeling as if you've been transported into the past, or into a dream. The Celtic and pre-Celtic elements are robust, although the fixation with "folklore as historical record" felt dated, and the whole "racial memory" thing is cringeworthy, if on brand for a 1940s setting.

On the whole an imperfect novel, but certainly succeeds as a work of imagination.

Fantasy story about a mysterious forest in which myths from the collective consciousnesses become real. The story of two brothers that own a cabin by a forest, which their father arduously studies but they do not understand much while young. Some strange events happen, and years later when the brothers grow they enter the forest and discover a range of mythical creatures (shamans, knights and the like) that protect and inhabit the forest. One brother (Christian) falls in love with a mythical women, but then she seems to die. He goes to search for her, and then the second brother (Steven) finds another incarnation of the same women and falls in love with her. Then Christian returns and kidnaps the women, a thing which makes Steven go and chase him through the forest. Many unrelated characters appear (and disappear as fast) and guide Steven through the forest. . The main characters seem not to be at all in control of their fate and seem to always "go with the flow", even if it does not make much sense. The whole story seems patched and not very all connected. It tries to give an impression of multiple myths intertwined but putting many unrelated stories and characters together needs in my opinion a bit stronger binding than the two brothers chasing something nebulous and always changing. Nicely written but the story seems to waste the potential of the setting. ( )

I grew up on the edge of a little wood -- it was mostly ‘young’ growth, to be honest, not anything like the ancient woods in this book -- but I can remembering adventuring through it as a child, and how once you made it past the brush and briars on the edge it receded into this creepy, quiet forest floor littered with old leaves and trillium. I remember a giant boulder that I would go read on, and past the boulder was a giant old felled tree, and once you passed the rise on the other side of the valley the floor would change to sticky mud at the lowest points, and there, I can remember thinking that magic had to be real. Mythago Wood maintains that not only is the magic real, but our fairy tales and myths come to flesh and blood life through our collective memory. This was like a much, MUCH darker Bridge to Terabithia in that you cross the threshold, and you're in a different world were magic exists and exerts its influence on your life, and I’m frankly shocked that I hadn’t really run across it before, because it was outstanding. I’m really glad I ran across it, and I know it’s going to leave shockwaves on my memory for quite a while.
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This started off as a dated clunker with some interesting bits. But by the end I was mesmerized. ( )