Encyclopedia of Fantasy (1997)
Wood, Bridget
Tagged: Author.
(1947- ) UK writer whose first novels – beginning with Mark of the Fox (1982) – were historical. She started producing work of genre interest with the Lute sequence of Supernatural Fictions – The Minstrel's Lute (1987) and Satanic Lute (1987). More recently, as Frances Gordon, she has published a Vampire novel, Blood Ritual (1994). The Wolfking series – Wolfking (1991), The Lost Prince (1992) and Rebel Angel (1993) in the main sequence, plus Sorceress (1994) – is of direct fantasy interest. The first three feature one or another kind of Timeslip by means of which characters from the future travel into a Land of Fable something like third-century Ireland, whose rightful rulers, members of the dynasty founded by Cormac mac Airt, must constantly strive both to regain power wrested from them by forces of Darkness and to maintain their bloodline, as they are part Wolf. Elements of Dark Fantasy – primarily through an emphasis on imaginative and/or invasive Sex – intermingle with touches of Science Fantasy, for there seems to be an inhabited asteroid in the works. Sorceress, set rather later, is a tale more central to fantasy as normally conceived, dealing as it does with the Thinning of pagan Ireland under the onslaught of Christianity.
Wood's later work shows a growing subtlety. [JC]
Bridget Wood
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