The Great West Wood by Philip Palmer (book review).

Philip Palmer’s The Great West Wood is that rare novel which feels both startlingly original and yet rooted in a mythic tradition as old as Britain itself. Set in the hilly South London suburb of Westwood—where the last remnants of a primeval forest still breathe with uncanny life—this is a tale where the natural and the supernatural blur so completely that you begin to wonder why you ever imagined they were separate.

Palmer’s conceit is irresistible: a patch of ancient woodland that once stretched across the Channel and the whole of England still exerts its eldritch influence. Trees whisper, children drift into the air like errant kites, and boglands disgorge their millennia-old dead. One such resurrection gifts us a Celtic warrior—equal parts Conan and Sláine—who blunders into the South London underworld and, in a piece of dark comic genius, rises as a crime lord. Think Robert Holdstock’s Mythago Wood colliding head-on with Top Boy, Gangs of London, and Peaky Blinders, with zombie overlords and a distinctly London swagger.

Palmer’s writing is alive with energy, wit, and menace. His ear for dialogue is razor sharp, whether capturing the cadences of gangland deal-making or the strange, sly mutterings of the forest itself. What elevates the book beyond a clever mash-up is the depth of its folkloric resonance: these aren’t just set-pieces of magic grafted onto a crime plot, but an exploration of how ancient pagan myth might bleed into the modern world, shaping it in ways at once terrifying and oddly believable.

It’s no surprise that readers have likened The Great West Wood to García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude, Ben Aaronovitch’s Rivers of London novels, or M.R. Carey’s haunting fables. But Palmer’s voice is distinctly his own—capricious, mischievous, and rather compelling.

As I turned the final page, I couldn’t help but think this book is crying out for adaptation. One can almost see Tom Hardy chewing the scenery as the Celtic ganglord in some future TV series. Until then, though, the magic belongs to the page—and what a riotous, invigorating, and darkly beautiful magic it is.

The Great West Wood is, quite simply, a triumph of imagination.

Stephen Hunt

The Great West Wood by Philip Palmer (Indie Pub’d)
414 pages. Available as an e-book or in paperback format from: https://amzn.to/3Jz8GwZ