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 part how 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.