Gate of Ivory - Hardcover

Holdstock, Robert

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 000224604X ISBN 13: 9780002246040

Publisher: Voyager, 1998

Synopsis

Holdstock delivers once again with a wonderful mythical thriller/quest adventure — breathtaking descriptions, absorbing mysteries solved by odd, obsessed characters. Uses The Mabinogion as a base text, but fills in the gaps!

As a boy, Christian Huxley witnessed his mother’s suicide after a terrifying raid from Kylhook (Culhwch) and his Arthurian warriors, who have broken out of Ryhope Wood and into the present to retrieve a long lost artifact.

As a young man, exploring the wood in his father’s wake, Christian again encounters Kylhook and makes an astonishing discovery that will lead him into a series of dangerous quests. The ultimate prize is the Gate of Ivory, the gate through which he can bring his mother back to life.

About this title

Review:

In his 1984 fantasy novel Mythago Wood, Robert Holdstock created a new seed-bed of myths. Ryhope Wood is a remnant of ancient British forest that's infinitely huger inside than out; a place where humanity's most deeply felt legends take on solid form. Gate of Ivory takes Christian Huxley (brother of Mythago Wood's narrator) into the haunted heartwoods, where he becomes entangled in the unfinished "Tale of Culhwch and Olwen" from the Welsh Mabinogion. This legend contains bizarre Monty Python-like tasks and trials whose humour Holdstock wryly acknowledges, while at the same time shaping them into a saga with a real sense of doom. The "Legion" undertaking the quest needs all its warriors, shamans and shapeshifters to stay ahead of the angry dead (and worse) pursuing them to the final mystical challenge at the gates of the underworld. En route, Christian brings together two lovers separated by the fact that they come from different versions, told many centuries apart, of the same forgotten myth. His final task is to enter the underworld like Orpheus and make an agonising choice of who to bring back. In Holdstock's hands, old archetypes fuse together with a raw mythic power. Compulsive storytelling. --David Langford

Review:

‘Britain’s best fantasist.’
The Times

‘Holdstock manages to bring back a mythic past so fresh it hasn’t stopped bleeding — and both tough and subtle enough to vie with the horrors of our modern world.’
Locus

About this edition

• Publisher: Voyager
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 000224604X
• ISBN 13: 9780002246040
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 400