You think Robin Hood retellings, you’d be perfectly justified in thinking they’re going to be about Robin Hood, am I right? And they are. They are. But a lot of them don’t feature Robin as the main character in the Sherwood Forest ‘hood. I was amazed at the number of them focusing on someone else, while Robin lurks on the fringes.
As I mentioned in my last post, any good Robin Hood novel or movie needs to have one or more of these iconic Robin Hood sidekick characters, usually part of Robin Hood’s gang, the Merry Men:
Little John, Will Scarlet, Maid Marion (token woman), Much the Miller’s Son, Friar Tuck, and Alan a’Dale. (A Saracen often gets added into the mix in modern retellings. Token POC.)
I have chosen three to review in this post.
First, a look at one of the Maid Marion books.
In an era where it has almost become an Olympic sport to reboot a famous piece of literature from the feminist perspective, there are many of these, and a big audience for them, too. (Like, I just saw an absolutely wonderful reboot of Macbeth from a four-woman production/acting/writing team in a south Minneapolis black-box theater a few months ago. I wish you the best, The Macbeths! I wish you the best, Rough Magic Performance Company! You are fabulous!). (And no, south Minneapolis is not a violent place. Or at least it wasn’t before certain people of the thug and goon persuasion came in there and turned it violent.) Wow, two digressions in one part of one post. Must be some kind of record. So, Maid Marion. Tailor-made for this kind of reboot. I should mention that there are also tons of feminist-perspective Robin Hood books in which Robin turns out to be a woman. More about that later. Here’s a Maid Marion novel many readers love. I agree with them!
Sherwood, by Meagan Spooner (2019)
Lady Marion is in mourning after she learns that her dearest love, Robert of Locksley (nicknamed Robin), has died during the Crusades. But she has to put her grief aside. Will Scarlet, the brother of her maid, is about to be executed. When she disguises herself to help free him, she sets in motion a series of events drawing her ever deeper into the righting of wrongs, the aiding of the innocent and helpless, and eventually, down the slippery slope to rob from the rich to give to the poor. In doing so, she flies in the face of expectations about her social class and her gender.
Spooner’s book is not a historical novel and it is not what I’d call romantasy, either. It seems to be categorized as YA by booksellers and publishers, but I wouldn’t call it YA. This is a fairytale retelling for sure–folk tale, I should say–so while it has no magic in it, it does fit into that retelling category of fantasy. Spooner’s Marion is a courageous and feisty woman who doesn’t wait around to be rescued. She does the rescuing. She’s young, but she is no swooning teen torn between two lovers. (not exactly.) She’s a woman with a lot of what’s called agency in a time when women were rarely allowed any.
The writing is good. It doesn’t distract from its setting around the time of the Crusades, but it doesn’t try to mimic that language, either. As the author says in an afterword, the tale of Robin Hood is patched together from many places and time periods, and her book follows the lead of her original, not worrying too much about any anachronisms or being faithful to any set of historical facts. Was Robin Hood really a nobleman named Robert of Locksley? Or was he somebody else entirely? Or was the name “Robin Hood”–as Spooner suggests in one part of her book, simply the common epithet given to a bandit in late medieval England? I admired Spooner’s ability to build a convincing and compelling novel from the materials of period atmosphere, historical fact, beloved legend, and exciting contemporary character and plot.
This is a book that is fun to read but has serious underpinnings. It’s a book about disguise. A character disguised as someone else, fooling everyone around her, even people who know her well, is a hard fictional tactic to pull off. It’s also one of the hoariest. Remember the scene in Jane Eyre, when Mr. Rochester disguises himself? (Jane wasn’t fooled, but then, very little got past Jane.) Remember The Scarlet Pimpernel? (You don’t? Not many people read that novel any more, but they should. It is tons of fun.) Remember The Prisoner of Zenda? (likewise. . .) Okay, you do remember Tale of Two Cities, right? Hasn’t this disguise business run its course? But every now and then, an author pulls the disguise trope off. Shakespeare did it, and in multiple plays that keep charming and thrilling audiences even now. One of Tana French’s most amazing novels, The Likeness, does. And Spooner’s novel does it, too. Very, very skillfully.
It’s not that a reader won’t say, oh, come on. . .that’s not realistic! A reader will say that. But a writer skilled in the use of this tactic keeps the pace and the excitement so compelling that we don’t stop to ask that question, and even when and if we do, the story just grabs us again and hurries us along. In fact, Spooner’s use of this well-worn trope goes beyond the skillful, because she uses it to raise some very interesting questions about the masks we all wear, masks that society compels us to wear. Marion is not the only character in the novel who puts on a false face.
As for the plausibility of disguise, Spooner asks the question, Don’t we see what we expect to see? In a trivial but very telling incident, a shyster at the fair nails this timeless piece of wisdom down for Marion and her father late in the novel, followed immediately afterward by an important episode that does the same. And Spooner accomplishes this feat without losing the fun and the pace of her novel.
She also raises some important questions about the difference between legality and justice. I think that’s a necessary thing to do in these times. She’s not starry-eyed about the outcome, either.
Then there’s the aspect of the book I maybe appreciated more than any other, the element of surprise. I’ve read too many novels that try to surprise the reader through manipulation, including the abhorrent “O. Henry ending.” I hate them. Hate ’em all! They assume the reader is stupid. By contrast, Sherwood had the ability to surprise me without any of the cheap tricks that turn me off as a reader in too many other books with “twisty” plots. Sherwood earns its surprises. Marion the character earns hers. They are a delight.
Next, there are Alan a’Dale books.
He’s the Robin Hood minstrel we all love. Actually, whenever I think of him, I can’t help thinking of the “Brave Sir Robin” episode in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. This Sir Robin is one of Arthur’s knights, not a minion of Robin Hood, but I can’t help myself. . .
I admit it, I am too easily distracted by anything Monty Python. Back to the point– One of the best books I’ve read for this series of posts is an Alan a’Dale book, Angus Donald’s Outlaw, Book I of his Robin Hood series.
Outlaw, by Angus Donald (2009)
Find out more about this novel and the others in the series HERE.
The main character, at least in Book I, is Alan Dale, Donald’s version of a Robin Hood side character, the minstrel Alan a’Dale. This novel, as is the case with others in my series of posts this year, is historical fiction. There are no fantasy elements (well. . .a few, sort of). But it’s a rousing adventure story that changes the thigh-slapping Merry Men into disciplined foot soldiers of Robin the Mafia boss of the Middle Ages.
Actually, that click-bait-ish subtitle (“Meet the Godfather of Sherwood Forest”) does the novel a disservice. Robin is an important figure in the novel, and I found it compelling to think that an outlaw in this historical period would actually be a pretty morally gray character. But Alan’s is the voice we hear. And because Donald has done his research, I could believe it, too. Many versions of the Robin Hood legend are set in the late 12th century, the time of the Third Crusade, and Donald has thoroughly integrated this historical era into Outlaw and all the other novels in his Outlaw Chronicles series. Outlaw is the first novel that Donald published in the series, but the first book chronologically is a prequel novel. There are twelve novels in the series overall, three of them more accurately described as novellas.
I can’t speak for the others in the series. I haven’t read them yet. (I plan to!) I can tell you, though, that Outlaw is very well written and fast-paced, with none of the faux-archaic language that spoils too many novels set in the time period. The characters, especially young Alan and Robin himself, are nuanced and well-developed. Plus, scenes of torture to rival Robin Hobbes. So it’s a dark read. Beware, if you don’t like those.
Last, this post will take a look at one of the Will Scarlet books.
Will is another of Robin Hood’s Merry Men. Actually, his name in some of the old ballads is Scarlock or Scathelock or other similar names, probably because these tales were communicated orally before being written down. Also, orthography–spelling–took a long time to standardize after printing was introduced in the 15th century. The surname “Scarlet” might refer to scarlet stockings that Will wears in some of the legends (or this might be a way of justifying his surname). Conversely, the variants on “Scathelock” may refer to lock-picking or lock-smashing, a handy skill for a bandit to possess. Then again, some legends suggest that Will Scarlet and Will Scarlock are two different characters entirely, not to mention yet another Will with a surname beginning with the letter S, Will Stutely. All this confusion is actually pretty characteristic of the ballad tradition.
Here is a Will Scarlet book I found pretty entertaining:
Scarlet, by A. C. Gaughen (2012)
I suppose it’s no spoiler to reveal that Scarlet, by A. C. Gaughen, is another one of those books that re-imagines a traditional or well-known male character as female. The book cover gives it away–and also the book’s promotional material–even though the reader doesn’t find out about this most interesting aspect of the novel’s main character until a good way into the story. In Gaughen’s reimagining of the Robin Hood legend, “Will Scarlet” is the name assumed by a young girl on the run. She disguises herself as a boy and ends up in Sherwood Forest as one of Robin Hood’s Merry Men. The main character’s story and the motives for her disguise are gradually revealed as the novel progresses.
It’s an interesting tale, handled well, but I had a little trouble as a reader. This Y.A. novel uses the typical Y.A. tactic of a first-person narration. We see the events directly through the main character’s eyes and hear her voice. Such a choice by an author allows the reader to identify more fully with the main character. It also comes with its own set of problems. For example, we readers can only know what the character knows. That makes it difficult, for example, to bring off a convincing plot surprise that the main character knows about or should know about before we readers do. This book falls into that trap.
The other problem is the language. The voice of the main character is presented to us as a certain type of dialect which sometimes leads a reader to have a hard time plowing through the book’s prose, but which also (trying hard to avoid spoilers here) leads the reader to certain conclusions, with an unconvincing rationale revealed for them, and in retrospect, an unconvincing voice overall. The author’s choices here are tricky to pull off, and for me, at least, they don’t quite work. I did find the book entertaining. It is part of a three-book series, so if you are charmed by the main character–and she is pretty charming!–you might want to read on.
Other characters have their own Robin Hood books!
I can’t possibly list all of them, but just about every Merry Man has a book of his (often her!) own–and so do some other Robin Hood mainstay characters who are not even Merry Men.
There are two or three Friar Tuck novels. Much the Miller’s Son is a minor Merry Man if there ever was one, but he has a few books too–and a webcomic!
There is even, believe it or not, at least one book from the perspective of the dastardly Sheriff of Nottingham: The Sheriff of Nottingham (1993), one of the few novels by the celebrated journalist and social commentator Richard Kluger. Writing a book from the perspective of a fictional bad guy is a trendy thing to do to a fairy tale. Gregory Maguire’s fantasy novel Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister, for example, gives the reader a lot of sympathy for one of the Cinderella fairytale’s baddies. His even more popular Wicked does the same for the Wizard of Oz baddie the Wicked Witch of the West. Reading reviews of Kluger’s novel leads me to believe, though, that he is making a serious fictional exploration of legal issues in the sheriff’s era–so this book was probably not written to fit the trend. I love historical novels that really delve into obscure historical issues and subcultures. This novel might have to go on my TBR pile.
There is even a Prince John book, The Wicked Prince: A Robin Hood Retelling, by Celeste Baxendell (2023), with alternating chapters from the prince’s point of view and Robin’s (she is a woman in this version of the story). This is part of a “clean” multiauthor fairytale retellings series with a swoony prince in every volume. The idea of Prince John, that pusillanimous villain, as a swoony prince is pretty intriguing. I doubt I’ll read this one, though, because it really does seem to be written for teens.
Fantastes 
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