Lavondyss - Critical Commentary and Awards

Critical Commentary and Awards

Like most sequels Lavondyss has been compared to its predecessor Mythago Wood, and it differs in many ways. Technically Lavondyss is set in the 1950s and has a third person narrative viewpoint; Mythago Wood is set in the 1940s with the first person narrative viewpoint. In terms of content, Lavondyss has a 'darker tone' than Mythago Wood due to its relentless focus "on the earth, stone, blood, dung, and death that are the necessary roots of the story." John Clute describes Ryhope wood in Lavondyss as a "metamorphic terrain of daunting rigor, an excremental sign-saturated inscape charged with twisting energy." He goes on to call the final chapters "superbly deranging and intense", concluding that "Lavondyss begins to seem like a thing in itself, inexplicable and gravid."

Mythago Wood and Lavondyss have been described as being significant because they are pure fantasy works that take place in an innovative, yet startlingly ordinary realm. Holdstock’s writing in these works has been described as an impressive mixture of poetic style and sensitivity. The Rhyhope wood series is considered to be "one of the landmark fantasy series of the late twentieth century."

Mythago Wood and Lavondyss have been described by Michael D. C. Drout as being two of Holdstock’s best works which, as fantasies, have an internally consistent framework of principles. These works are noted as dealing with the traditions of the British Isles with originality and deftness by incorporating its unwritten culture, including the Morris dances, the Green Man, Shamanism, Neolithic tribespeople, and pre-Roman Celtic traditions. Death and mortal remains are also prominent and disturbing parts of these works.

Lavondyss rises above the generic nature of genre fiction and approaches literary fiction in its complexity. John Clute gives the work mixed praise and describes Lavondyss as "half pedantry and proselytizing, half an epiphany of metamorphosis that reads like braille, it is a book whose appalling sincerity puts to shame the Celtic junk it fleetingly resembles."

Lavondyss has won a number of awards including the BSFA Award for Best Novel in 1988.