Avilion  (English, Paperback, Holdstock Robert)

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.

About the Author
Robert Holdstock (1948 – 2009) Robert Paul Holdstock was born in Kent in 1948. He received a MSc in medical zoology and spent several years in the early '70s in medical research before becoming a full-time writer in 1976. His first published story appeared in the New Worlds magazine in 1968 and for the early part of his career he wrote science fiction - including, in 1980, Tour of the Universe, co-written with Malcolm Edwards, for which theme park rights were sold, and the film novelisation of John Boorman's The Emerald Forest - but it is with Fantasy that he is most closely associated. 1984 saw the publication of Mythago Wood, winner of the BSFA and World Fantasy Awards for Best novel, and widely regarded as one of the key texts of modern fantasy; it and its follow-ups cemented his reputation as the definitive portrayer of the wild wood. Robert Holdstock died in November 2009, just four months after the publication of Avilion, the final Ryhope Wood novel.