From archive (archive)
Subject: Lavondyss -- Comment, Question, Major Spoilers
From: haste+@andrew.cmu.edu (Dani Zweig)
Organization: Graduate School of Industrial Administration, Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh, PA
Date: 6 Nov 89 17:49:38 GMT



"Lavondyss" is a sequel to Robert Holdstock's "Mythago Wood", which won
a Best Fantasy Novel award.  I found it a better book than its
predecessor. 

The ending, however, spiralled in on itself faster than I liked, and I'm
not sure I understood it.

MAJOR SPOILERS


There are really two ends.  Tallis both dies of old age in the Wood
*and* returns home as a child.  This seems to me to work against one of
the strengths of the book (and its predecessor) -- the notion that
although the inhabitants of the Wood are Mythagos, they play for keeps,
that what happens to you there *really* happens.

So how does Tallis return home?  Are we to take all her adventures in
the Wood as a vision?

The author does give us the tools to handwave our way past this problem:
 Tallis is both myth-maker and myth.  (Indeed, she is one of the
earliest of the myths.)  As such she is eligible for a mythic ending to
her story.  Further, it is implied that her mundane home may be thought
of as being either in England or the fringes of the Wood.  In the sense
that modern England is just the outermost shell of the Wood, her entry
to the wood and subsequent resurrection and return home is as legitimate
as her lover's *exit* from the wood and subsequent return home and
resurrection.

Do you buy that?  I'm not sure I do.  It's too pat, and robs the rest of
the book of too much of its significance.  So how *do* we interpret the
ending?

-----
Dani Zweig
haste+@andrew.cmu.edu 

God helpe the man so wrapt in Errours endless traine  -- Edmund Spenser