Robert Holdstock’s Mythago Wood

"Paul Kincaid’s engaging discussion of Robert Holdstock’s masterwork is a model of enlightening criticism, providing both historical and literary contexts without resorting to special pleading or academic jargon. Even readers who have long loved Mythago Wood are likely to be pleasantly surprised at how thoroughly Kincaid unravels the true depth and complexity of the novel."
—Gary K. Wolfe, Professor of Humanities Emeritus, Roosevelt University, USA

​This book is a detailed examination of one of the most important works of fantasy literature from the twentieth century. It goes through Mythago Wood by Robert Holdstock considering how it engages with war on a personal and family level, how it plays with ideas of time as something fluid and disturbing, and how it presents mythology as something crude and dangerous. The book places Mythago Wood in the context of Holdstock’s other works, noting in parthow complex ideas of time have been a consistent element in his fiction. The book also briefly examines how the themes laid out in Mythago Wood are carried through into later books in the sequence as well as the Merlin Codex.
Paul Kincaid is the author of books on Iain Banks, Christopher Priest, and Brian Aldiss, as well as two collections of essays. He has twice won the BSFA Non-Fiction Award and has also received the Science Fiction Research Association’s Thomas Clareson Award.