Robert Holdstock – författare

In those days Broceliande was a terrible place, an ancient gloomy forest growing over misty dells, forgotten stones, a place of hidden lakes and strangling thickets. Though the true heart of Broceliande could never be found, the stink of its corruption oozed from the edgewood, shedding ghosts like autumn leaves. This was the forest of legend, where Merlin had come to dream his magic and the enchantress Vivien had come to beguile that magic from him.

Martin and Rebecca have long since fled the forest, but when they are forced to return years later for their mother''s funeral, they are at once ensnared in the forest''s net of enchantment, an evil that has held the local villages in a root-strong grip. And when Rebecca gives birth to Daniel, a beautiful child who is deaf, dumb and blind, she finds herself sucked into a twilight world where she can see only strange, mysterious shadows.

The triumphant return to the world of MYTHAGO WOOD, one of the greatest fantasy novels of the twentieth century

At the heart of Ryhope Wood, Steven and the mythago Guiwenneth live in the ruins of a Roman villa close to a haunted fortress from the Iron Age, from which Guiwenneth''s myth arose. She is comfortable here, almost tied to the place, and Steven has long since abandoned all thought of returning to his own world. They have animals, protection and crops.

They also have two children, a combination of human and mythago. Jack is like his father, an active boy keen to know all about `the outer world''; Yssobel takes after her mother, even to her long auburn hair.

But this idyll cannot last. The hunters who protected Guiwenneth as a child have come to warn her she is in danger. Yssobel is dreaming increasingly of her Uncle Christian, Steven''s brother, who disappeared into Lavondyss, and Jack wants to see ''the outer world'' more than anything. Events are about to overtake them.

Jack Chatwin has visions, which leave tangible evidence - sounds and smells, which linger afterwards. What he sees are two primitive figures, with painted faces - Greyface and Greenface, a brother and sister. He calls them bullrunners. John Garth is a city dowser, searching for the mythical pre-Roman city of Glanum. He hopes to find an entryway to the elusive city beneath Exburgh, Jack''s home town. And he thinks Jack''s bullrunners may be connected to Glanum . . . Years later, Jack, now grown up, agrees to take part in experiments to investigate his bullrunners - until Greyface, the male, breaks free of Jack and takes corporeal form. The bullrunner kidnaps Jack''s young daughter so Jack will force Greenface to follow her brother-husband, even against her own wishes. Though Greyface returns the daughter, he keeps a shadow of her, which takes on a life of its own. If Jack refuses to co-operate, the shadow will drain his daughter''s vitality and personality - and her very future.The story of Jack''s search for Greenface is interwoven with the connections between the bullrunners and the mystical city of Glanum in this resonant tale of ancient mythic wonder.

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 ...

Readers love Mythago Wood:

''6.0 stars. This book is a MASTERPIECE and will likely be on my list of "All Time Favourite" novels before too long'' Goodreads reviewer, ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

''Blimey, what a book! Genuine classic of mythological fiction.'' Goodreads reviewer, ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

''An imaginative masterpiece has broken the boundaries of fantasy genre. In Mythagowood Myths manifest from characters''s unfathomable desires. The mysterious forest which the protagonists are obsessed with is an original concept of legends, it rooted in subconscious mind arouses overwhelming power of human minds''. Goodreads reviewer, ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

''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.'' Goodreads reviewer, ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

''I''ve seldomly read a book that is so rich and enthralling in its descriptions and really draws me into the mythical woods, where time flows differently, where your subconscious can conjure up archetypes and these can infringe upon your very real life outside of the forest.'' Goodreads reviewer, ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

When Odin''s curse fell upon him, Harald Swiftaxe, the young Norse warrior, lusty in love and battle, was fully human no longer. He was incensed with the animal rage of the god''s devotees, the Berserkers. The snarling ferocious savagery of the bear possessed him. Immune to fire and steel, frenzied by the smell of blood and the sight of torn human flesh, he was driven to the worst of human deeds . . . The stench of fear was meat and drink to him, and cowering women learned of his cruel, insatiable lust.The bear screeched its ecstasy - yet at times the man dimly understood the horror. Could the demon god be killed, the spell lifted...? If there was a way, the price of failure would be high, greater than death itself . . .

In the Celtic tribal lands of Connacht, he came of age among the Druids and headhunters and the ghosts of the great Bronze Age people of Danann.He fought his savage, bloodthirsty way to the west, as a naked warrior who had rejected the tribal laws. And there Arthur, Warlord of the Britons, came to find him, to exploit his skill and invulnerability in the war against the Saxons.Yet Swiftaxe, the Berserker, wanted one thing only; to break the curse that condemned him to his life of frenzied violence and bloodlust.But until the might of the Saxons was destroyed, he would never be free . . .

On the planet Aeran, the original colonists have undergone a drastic change: under the influence of some strange psychic force they have forgotten their identity and created a new culture - an exact reconstruction of the Stone Age society that flourished in Ireland 6,000 years ago.Has some strange racial memory been awakened? Or are both cultures the product of a social blueprint implanted throughout the cosmos by a long-vanished race?

''A planet where eerie time displacements, like winds, can dump alien artefacts from the past and future into now, or sweep things away from now into anywhen.''''A planet that attracts both scientists and fortune hunters, rummaging among the strangenesses, risking oblivion, carrying with them their own hang-ups, desperations, odd urges and searches.''You won''t easily forget this haunting, fully-realised world.'' TRIBUNE.

Deep in the sounds, scents and shifting rhythms of the Amazon forest, a family have lost their seven-year-old child, stolen by the mysterious ''Invisible People'', the tribe which has never been seen.Through ten years their agonised search for him takes them beyond the world''s last great natural frontier into the cruel beauty of the Brazilian jungle.When at last father and son do meet - in a dramatic and terrifying encounter - it is in the emerald forest, a place where the mythical and magical powers of primal existence must clash with the cold-hearted greed of modern man.

There is a landscape between reality and dreams, a strange and primitive country that exists upon the edge of our waking world. Michael Whitlock knows that country well. His best friend lives there...It beings with a scatter of earth, thrown over the infant by unseen hands, a haunting attack that is repeated day after day, culminating with an explosive fall of mud that nearly kills the boy. And found in those tons of raw, wet earth: flints, chalk artefacts, and remains of a primitive shrine and the dismembered carcase of a hunting dog.The Whitlocks'' house, in the Kentish Weald, stands near a chalk-pit, and it is here that their son, Michael creates his preculiar imaginary world, making his camp by the pile of grave-earth from that early attack. Unaware of what is happening to him, the boy touches and uses the strange force that now ebbs and flows in the pit, And when the haunting returns, this time it is more subtle, almost wonderful in its secutive nature. Torn between a fear of the supernatural and greed for the results of Michael''s power, his adoptive parents are helpless. It is left to Françoise Jeury, a psyhic investigator, to piece together the bizarre truth of th epit and the shrine and the oddly silent boy.

He had been a quiet family man - devoted to his wife and children, happy in his home, happy in his work. It took just thirty minutes of shattering, obscene violence to transform him into a remorseless, avenging hunter of evil - a savage practitioner and enemy of the occult. For somewhere- somewhere beyond the normal and the good - they had his family. And Dan Brady had to find them.Against him was all the evil of the supernatural - powers he neither knew nor understood. Powers he himself would have to learn to use if he were to track down his family in the preternatural night.

Out on the bleak coast, the land itself held memories of blood and betrayal. Memories that had summoned both the evil and the innocent in a dark and hellborn quest.For Dan Brady the talisman could be a precious clue in his desperate quest to discover where the occult power that had abducted his family was keeping them. But a force had been unleashed, a foulness from the dark past that threatened a whole community.And only Dan Brady could confront it.

She looked like an ordinary Indian girl. But within her she carried a burden of evil, a force that yearned to rend and destroy. And she had travelled 3000 miles, crossing plains, seas and mountains, to bring that force to Arachne.Arachne - the obscene occult power that had seized Dan Brady''s wife and children and still held them in its evil clutches. Its strength was growing, its tentacles reaching out to trap and enslave the innocent and the unwary.And now, in a bleak mountain village, Dan Brady, the Night Hunter, prepared to confront a horror that could finally destroy him and all he held dear.

In the remote West Country the farms around a small town are suddenly haunted by ghostly presences - not all in human form. But when a ghost-hunter is called in to eliminate the hauntings, a greater terror is unleashed upon the land.For, below the dark woods, the deserted tunnels of an ancient mine have become the focus of primeval supernatural forces - summoned by Arachne and now growing in strength.And when the shrine''s hideous guardian is released, the time comes for Dan Brady to challenge again the occult power that snatched away his family.

Horror stalked the streets of Paris.As a child Etoile had run with the wolves and killed with the wolves. Then he was brought to civilization and his past was forgotten. But not when the moon shone full! Then he could not fight the bestial urges his body felt. The wolves called Etoile and the animal within responded, compelling him to stalk the streets of Paris, thirsting with vulpine ferocity for the taste of blood.

The serenity of the countryside is shattered by the dark and brutal rituals of the past...The SatanistsThe undreamt-of horrors of the night herald, for them, the promise of eternal life, despite the memory of one man''s shattered body nailed to a cross. But the Messiah has been dead two thousand years. Now is the time of the Anti-Christ...

From the landscapes of prehistory to 40th millennium AD, from post-war England to the full canvas of the inhabited galaxy, Robert Holdstock''s haunting mythic imagination weaves eight stories of arresting power and ingenuity.Includes the original story from which the World Fantasy Award-winning novel, Mythago Wood, was expanded.

At the heart of the wildwood lies a place of mystery and legend, from which few return and none emerged unchanged: Lavondyss . . . the ultimate realm, the source of all myth.When Harry Keeton disappeared into Ryhope Wood, his sister Tallis was just an infant. Now, thirteen years old, she hears him whispering to her from the Otherworld. He is in danger. He needs her help. Using masks, magic and clues left by her grandfather, she finds a way to enter the primitive forest and begin her search. Eventually she comes to Lavondyss itself, a realm both beautiful and deadly, a place in which she is changed forever . . . Robert Holdstock''s Mythago Wood won the World Fantasy Award and is among the most praised post-war novels of the fantastical. In this haunting sequel, Lavondyss, we are returned to the Wildwood and the mythos that Holdstock has made his own.Winner of the BSFA Award for best novel, 1989.

Simon Bradley, a highly imaginative child, brain-damaged after a bizarre attack, vanishes one day from his home. Months later a body is found on the edge of Ryhope Wood. The wood shields a heart of primeval forest wherein live phantoms and strange creatures - mythagos - those shades generated over time by our dreams and nightmares.Alex has in fact been absorbed by the wood, drawn into its green heart - through a ''hollowing''. There his dreams will continue to populate the wood with its mythagos. But like Alex, they too are damaged: the great heroes he conjures are warped, incomplete and dangerous. Savage and lost, they are compelled to seek their creator. The havoc they wreak threatens those who search for Alex, including his father, Richard.In the end, it will threaten the very existence of the wood itself and of its natural mythagos. Richard must quest repeatedly through Ryhope''s hollowings in an attempt to bring his son to safety and quiet the monsters Alex has created.There his dreams continue to populate the wood with "mythagos", warped, dangerous hero figures, threatening all those who come in search of the boy.

Several years ago, Christian Huxley''s father, George, obsessively documented the strange phenomena emanating from Ryhope Wood at the edge of their property. He watched the ancient heroes emerge, shouting both incomprehensible warnings and unmistakable invitations. Recklessly, George followed them inot the mysterious sylvan shadows that changed him forever.Christian himself was not untouched by these living dreams. A childhood encounter with a phantom from another time draws him to the Wood as an adult. Deep in Ryhope, Christian uncovers the lie that permeates his worst nightmares. And like his father, he will be consumed with the mythagoes of Ryhope, especially a young Celtic warrior called Guiwenneth. She is the key to the mystery of the universe, an ancient heroine caught in a timeless tale of bravery and sacrifice.Now, together with a band of crusaders from a world long gone, Christian and Guiwenneth become part of the unfolding stories both remembered and forgotten. They meet sorcerers in battle and giants who can travel miles in one step. And they discover the meaning of the two gates, Ivory and Horn - one the lie, the other the truth.

Merlin is almost young, and immortal, one of those born to walk the paths of the world, a man with charm carved into his bones, and enchantment running through his body thicker than blood . . .And this is a time of heroes, centuries before King Arthur is born, men and women who, though not gods themselves, are something more than mere mortals. For decades, Jason has been immured in his ship Argo in a lake in the far north, alive, but not, still traumatised by the murder of his sons by his enchantress wife Medea . . . until Merlin sees through the veil of enchantment and realises the boys were never killed; it was all a trick.Through the mists-shrouded isle of Alba to Greek Land, Merlin leads Jason and his Argonauts, some old, some new, on a quest to find the boys, journey filled with heroism and heartbreak, truth and treachery.