Today, I’m sharing the first edition of From The Shelves with a review of Stephen Lawhead’s Hood.
Nothing is as it was first presented to us as children. Before reading the first installment of Stephen Lawhead's The King Raven Trilogy, Hood, my experience with the legend of Robin Hood consisted of the 1973(!) animated Disney adaptation and the (very bad) 2010 live action adaptation with Russell Crowe.
I first discovered Stephen Lawhead by recommendation of Jeremy Boreing and the Daily Wire. After reading the standalone novel Byzantium and then his Bright Empire series, I figured it was time to give the King Raven trilogy a shot.
The first thing you'll notice about Lawhead's take on Robin Hood is that it is set not in Sherwood Forest as it was in the Disney film but in a mysterious forest in Wales during the Norman invasion of England. Bran ap Brychan is the reluctant heir of Elfael, perpetually unable to please his father the king. But when his father is murdered along with nearly all of his warriors, Elfael falls into the hands of the Normans as nothing but a pawn in a larger political conquest and Bran goes on the run.
Through an unfortunate set of events, Bran is left for dead in the forest until he is discovered and slowly nursed back to health by a mysterious old woman called Angharad. In addition to healing Bran physically, Angharad prepares Bran to fulfill his destiny as the rightful heir of Elfael, even if he’s not always willing to accept that destiny. Of course, even when you’re prepared, things don’t always work out quite like you planned.
Bran oscillates between accepting the mantle of a king and running away, leaving the people of Elfael to fend for themselves, too many times for my taste. It’s obvious that he is the prototypical reluctant leader with a fair amount of psychological baggage, but I thought the back and forth in his story arc made the middle of the book a little slow.
But once we reach the last couple hundred pages, the plot really starts coming together in an exciting way that leads into the rest of the series. There are a couple interesting storylines I’ll be looking forward to in the second book, Scarlet.
First, there’s an interesting dynamic going on among the priests on each side of the political struggle for Elfael and the surrounding territory. The monks in Elfael spend a lot of time asking God to deliver them from their invaders, while the priests of the Norman invaders seem very confident in their supposed divine right to take any land they see fit.
Second, the continued development of Bran and how he leads his people will be fascinating. Lawhead’s Bran isn’t what some in Evangelical circles would call “winsome,” but I think he knows what time it is, or what needs to be done. This makes his storyline compelling, because the balance of being "winsome" at all costs and actually being effective is something I think about a lot these days. There's something we can learn from Bran in this regard.
I’d recommend Hood to anyone looking for a refreshing take on a popular legend, especially if you’re into a little bit of historical fiction.
Great review! I have not heard of this book before. Buh, I recently read the version by Roger L. Green called "The Adventures of Robin Hood". It's got a bunch of Christian undertones and had me thinking about our relationship with Christ. Though I suspect it was written for older children it was quite good.