Enjoyed this more than I thought I would. The blurb from the producer of Game of Thrones made me a bit worried, but it wasn't as dark and awful as I expected...though it definitely does go Game of Thrones on you at the end.

The remarkable thing about this Robin Hood retelling is that, rather than stick with the good vs. bad binary that the stories have come to be known for, almost everyone in Nottingham is genuinely trying to do what's right...it's just that the conflicting ideals of what "right" is means everyone ends up convinced that the others are wrong. And it's not just a lack of communication--our characters get plenty of opportunities to chat about their ideals (which is where, to me, Makaryak's original intention for this book to be a play is most obvious (and also where his play writing experience is a godsend, because these conversations might have gotten extremely dry if they weren't so well paced))--but honest communication isn't enough to overcome fundamental disagreements. Not exactly a happy message in terms of compromise.

So, things I loved: lots of well-differentiated characters with strong enough personalities that I could tell them apart and remember them; big ideas; enough action to keep those ideas from bogging everything down; complicated human relationships all around.

Things I didn't like so much: as the book went on, more characters introduced with less to define them and less to do (perhaps they do more in the sequel); our two lead characters both dying at the end. Seriously? Both?

Makaryk's Robin Hood retelling focuses primarily on the historical setting and the ideas, so if you're coming for whiz-bang action or traditional stories about archery tournaments and skin-of-the-teeth rescues, you might be disappointed (though I wasn't). After browsing ye olde Wikipedia, it looks like he's taken a few ideas here and there from several different Robin Hood stories and stirred them together in a way that mostly works out--even if I did love Lancelyn Green's action-y, fights-as-well-as-Robin Marian. The only real hiccup, I would say, is that he seemed to want to fit in a few too many characters from the various stories. Stutley and the White Hand guy both could have been left out entirely without any harm, though again, perhaps they have more to do in the sequel.

Quick plot summary for my future self:

Robin of Locksley and William de Wendenal are good friends with King Richard the Lionheart during the crusades--all weathered, experienced veterans and savvy political movers and all, as it happens, juggling the role of "king" on the battlefield. Richard sends Robin and William back to England to investigate lost supplies that his soldiers desperately need. An unexpected holdup in Sherwood Forest leads them to split up their mission: Robin hangs out with the landless peasant outlaws to try to get them to stop stealing and William goes with Captain Guy of Gisborne to try to get Sheriff of Nottingham Roger de Lacy to negotiate a peace.

Of course, nothing is quite so simple. Robin's father had been taking in peasants unable to pay the "Saladin taxes", but his refusal to pay his own taxes on principal got his manor burned, leaving those in his care homeless. Lady Marion Fitzwalter took up his torch, fencing stolen goods for her band of outlaws (in some legends, as in Makaryk's book, the Merry Men are Marion's Men). Robin quickly determines that these ragamuffins are going to get someone killed and teaches them how to hold a sword safely and how to avoid having to use them, which leads to some farcical theater that actually attracts local gentry. As their skills improve, the Merry Men share their bounty...much to Robin's chagrin, since he's technically trying to shut this farce down.

William is frustrated by de Lacy's high-minded ideals and a long-game plan for bureaucratic reform that doesn't include negotiating a peace when he doesn't think the outlaws are worthy of the legitimacy that negotiating would give them. Meanwhile, Gisbourne is growing increasingly irate with de Lacy's mercies, including allowing petty criminals to join the ranks of his hand-picked Nottingham guard and ignoring the small-time bandits in Sherwood Forest until they're too big to ignore. If the law doesn't stick to the letter the way it's supposed to, where does that leave the justice-loving Captain?

Some other great characters:
> Will Scarlet, here no longer Robin's old servant but instead a young, knife-wielding thief chased from the streets of Nottingham by Gisbourne's guards;
> Elena Gamwell, his lover, the only other decent fighter in the group, who has unquestioning faith in Will's strength;
> John Little, still big, but now filling the role of the old hand--basically the loving adopted father of every member of Marion's Men;
> Much, the scrappy little orphan mutually charmed by Robin and Elena, who sometimes hangs out with the White Hand guy;
> Friar Tuck, deep in his cups but still wise and actually with a few words about God;
> Prince John, a delightful but definitely not historically accurate agent of chaos;
> Arable de Burel, William's long-lost love, the last survivor of a persecuted family desperately looking for a patron to keep her safe.

The more colorful characters are definitely hanging out in Sherwood, where we have some fun with Robin's unwanted growing reputation as "Robin Hood" in contrast to the politicking going on in Nottingham...at least until everything inevitably gets serious. If you look at that list of characters, you'll probably know what happens to throw things off the rails. Once first blood has been spilled, it keeps going, even to the point of introducing unnecessary characters only to kill them later. I enjoyed the twists and the stakes ramping up as every character takes their good intentions to extremes: Gisbourne's reluctant willingness to break the law he holds sacred to restore order, William and Robin's diverging interpretations of their duty to their King, de Lacy's decision to turn his long game into a sudden death match, and Prince John's gleeful determination to wreak havoc just for the fun of it.

This is definitely a book driven more by characters and ideas than by action and adventure, though there's enough of the former to keep the plot propelling a long.

Oh, and let me give a shout out to Makaryk for some of the best lines in an acknowledgements section I have ever read: "I know most people won't read that previous list, which is why I inserted one random character from Game of Thrones into the mix, just to see if anyone noticed." The punchline that made me laugh out loud actually comes after that! ( )

A civil servant trying to keep his county solvent; a Captain of the guard who just wants people to follow the rules; and a well-connected aristocratic lady who has taken a bunch of disenfranchised villagers under her protection. Into this mix wanders two Crusader knights on a mission from the absent king. Legend will turn one into a hero and the other a villain. But is that what really happened?

This interesting, if at times overlong, deconstruction of the Robin Hood story replaces the traditional good vs evil dichotomy with a more nuanced look at those surrounding, and influenced by, the actions of the three groups of people all trying to do the right thing and in the process creating havoc.

By placing an equal emphasis on the surrounding characters as it does the regular hero of these tales, Makaryk, presents a lively examination of the power of myth and the impact of best intentions gone wrong. ( )

Topsy-turvy version of the Robin Hood legend. Skimmed toward the end. Beginning brilliant but it petered out. ( )

As a short preface, I was only ever familiar with Howard Pyle's book, "The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood," and the Disney film. And even then, it's been so long since I've read the book or seen the film that only the most memorable of details have stuck with me.

So Nottingham didn't feel like much of an adaptation or reimagination to me, and I judged it mostly as a historical novel about a character who may or may not have been a real person.

It took a while to get through this book, and not because I enjoyed it so much that I wanted to savor the experience. I wouldn't say it was a slog, but I put it down for almost a month at one point because I just wasn't invested in the story.

The wordiness got a bit much for me, in that it didn't have much of an appealing prose style or anything else going for it. Also, there's a lot of anachronistic language; the author defends this in the author's note in the end, but ultimately I didn't care for it.

The characters saved the book, I think. I enjoyed the characterization of Robin and the others, especially Marion, and I loved most of their banter.

Maybe fans of the Robin Hood legend would like it more?

*ARC received through BookishFirst* ( )

No King. No rules. England, 1911. I love a good retelling and I've never encountered a Robin Hood one before! This one twists fairly far away from the original classic story(which doesn't bother me, but may bother others so keep it in mind). I love that Marion isn't just a silly girl on the sidelines in this and Makaryk did a great job of not having good or evil characters, rather mixing everyone into imperfect shades of grey. He immerses you in the time period and his details behind each character, their mannerisms, and their motivations is amazing. That being said, you really have to commit to this book. It's a long one at almost 500 pages, but it is a stunning example of a creative retelling.