Returning home from France, Steven Huxley resumes a life steeped in sadness, mythology, family disquiet, and mythology. Set in the immediate years following the end of World War II, this novel brings to life memories from the past. Returning to his childhood home Steven becomes reacquainted with his older brother Christian. Christian has decided to pick up and study their deceased father's lifetime work: the study of Ryhope Wood. It was through this work that the life of the Huxley household was worsened during the boy's formative years, and Steven can see that it now has trapped his brother. Reading this book I was given this detailed zeitgeist of both a time and place that once existed and which remains in the social unconsciousness of society. Christian recounts how the wood is magical and that their father's work was definitely on to something. In time, Christian venture off into woods informing his brother of the mysteries he believes it possesses; over the weeks and months that follow he is not heard from. Then this novel begins to step up a gear.

Steven creates from the woods and through his own subconscious/unconscious memories the woman Guiwenneth. She is the physical manifestation or mythago that comes unbidden into Steven's life. He becomes enraptured by her preternatural creation and falls in love with her. Their is no denying that this is a love story wrapped up in heroic tale featuring an all too unlikely hero, and it was the better for it. The prose was crisp, the characters were imbued with all the hallmarks expected for whatever period of time they were drawn from, the horror and otherworldliness aligned with the myth creations of man were given the author's own touch but remained tangible and tactile to the novel's central protagonists. My only faults with this novel are that it was short and that certain characters exploits can only be read in the follow up novels of this series. The author certainly polished off this novel with a case of "Leave them wanting more". He succeeded.

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