Hood

Hood
© 2006 Stephen Lawhead
496 pages

Beyond the borders of Norman-controlled England lies free Britain, and between them the March -- a thick band of forest whose depths may conceal outlaws and monsters.  Hood reimagines Robin Hood as an exiled British prince, who narrowly escaped a slaughter that claimed the life of his father the king and most of their fellow countrymen.  Nearly dead, the young prince is nursed back to health by an old woman who steeps him in the lore of the ancient Britons, and inspires him with the story of a mysterious and powerful Raven King.  Assuming the mantle of the king -- the raven and his father -- Bran wages a psychological war against the occupying Normans, hoping to use supplies stolen from their convoys to feed his people and somehow effect their freedom.

Hood has two veins of interest;   first it's the novel of a useless prince who  is suddenly ennobled when he realizes someone has to defend what's left of his people, and the responsibility is on him as the only link to their old country.  That he becomes some sort of British Batman, using the aura of a monster to frighten the Normans, is an unexpected and fun angle that uses the medieval awe of nature's mysteries well enough.  The second vein, of course, is seeing Robin Hood in the story; there is a lass named Merian, who is torn between loyalty to old Elfael and the attraction to power and status in the form of a Norman marriage;   a survivor from the warband who is named Iwan, and a potbellied and mischievous friar, the latter three of whom become members of Rhi Bran's band. "Hood", or Hud,  is used as a pun - -referring to both a British phantom and Bran's hooded Batsuit.

The author adds in an ending note that the Robin Hood tales were collected through songs over the centuries, and that the earliest of them name not Richard nor John, or even Henry as in Pyle's collection, but "comely king Edward".  The author believes the Hood legend is truly ancient, and may be rooted in the British resistance to the Normans, specifically that fought in the Welsh marches with longbows.  While I'm skeptical on that front, I enjoyed the story here completely.  One of the Normans is so villainous that one of his far more subtle (but no less ambitious) neighbors is baffled at the obviousness of it, but I imagine the Machiavellian will be the serious threat in the books that follow.

Here be Dragons

Here be Dragons

© 1985 Sharon Penman

700 pages             

 Here Be Dragons takes readers to the Welsh Marches in 13^th century England. King John, remembered for losing England’s ancestral holdings in France and being gelded by his own barons via the Great Charter , reigns. His struggles with the powers of Europe are not limited to the Continent, however, for restive Wales is far from defeated. The Welsh stand apart,  increasingly united under one very savvy and battle-hardened prince, and not even the marriage of John’s daughter to said prince will neutralize them.  Although this is first in a trilogy about the feuding brothers of the prince, Here be Dragons is wholly dominated by the relationship between King John,  Llewyln of Wales, and Joanna – the woman who stood between them.  John’s illegitimate daughter and Llewyln’s unpopular Norman wife, Joanna will spent decades trying to keep the peace between the two in a feud that becomes increasingly bitter. The appeal of the novel is the balancing act she plays between two more or less sympathetic men in opposition, though both have faults and John is far harder to redeem. (Such a feat is made possibly only by having a narrator who sees him as kindly father who rescues her from impoverished bastardy.)  After John’s demise, the similarly acrimonious relationship between Joanna, her eldest stepson Gruffydd, and her natural son Dafvdd,  rises to the top.  It’s a basic case of sibling rivalry, with Gruffydd loathing his half-Norman half-brother and fearing that the influence of  the “Norman witch” will lead young Dafydd to usurp him as the heir apparent.   The writing consists largely of characters talking or arguing, interspersed with bits of historic and cultural background information filling in gaps.  There’s more nonfictional narrative than fictional, but Joanna’s ordeal – and the spotlight on Wales’ powers --   help overcome that, at least for the first five hundred pages. (After that the arguments and mini-lectures on Welsh history grow wearisome, but happily there’s a late-game catastrophic failure of moral judgment to infuse some drama into the plot.)  For the reader who doesn’t mind a novel that’s half nonfiction, Here be Dragons offers a rare look at the Plantagenet from both inside and out.