The concept is that Ryhope Wood is a demiplane, to use tabletop RPG lingo, one that may seem finite from the outside, but once you step inside, it’s a far larger and dangerous place. Yes, the wood in question is called that and not the title of the story. Anyway, back to this thing: I fell in love with the concept of Ryhope Wood. Note that love for and actually frolicking in nature are two different things, and these days, you can’t pay me to camp in the woods for even a night unless I still have access to the Internet and other joys of modern technology. Given that I grew up in a rustic neighborhood that had long been urbanized, I always had a love for nature. As luck would have it, I chanced upon it in the university library, became intrigued by the lovely cover and back cover synopsis, and checked out to book.

At that time, there wasn’t an Internet for me to order it off an online bookstore, and I had to depend on the whim and mercy at the local bookstore to read anything. I first read this book a few years after it first came out in 1984. Sadly, I’m not good at pretending that much. This book is held in such high esteem that it has become one of those things that one need to profess to love and having seen the light because of it, or be viewed as a credibility-free poseur that doesn’t know good fantasy if it stole one’s precious ring and threw it into a volcano. I hope you aren’t expecting some deep, literary review of the Mythago Wood by the late Robert Holdstock.

Mythago wood review