Robin McKinley - The Outlaws of Sherwood

Author: Robin McKinley

Title: The Outlaws of Sherwood

Language: English

Format: ebook

Rating: 34 stars

Reading challenge:  A book that talks about refugees and integration*

No of pages: 284

Date read: 01.12-03.12.2017

Goodreads

BLURB:

The Robin Hood legend comes thrillingly alive in Robin McKinley’s re-imagining of the classic adventure.

Young Robin Longbow, sub-apprentice forester in the King’s Forest of Nottingham, must contend with the dislike of the Chief Forester, who bullies Robin in memory of his popular father. But Robin does not want to leave Nottingham or lose the title to his father’s small tenancy, because he is in love with a young lady named Marian—and keeps remembering that his mother too was gentry and married a common forester.Robin has been granted a rare holiday to go to the Nottingham Fair, where he will spend the day with his friends Much and Marian. But he is ambushed by a group of the Chief Forester’s cronies, who challenge him to an archery contest...and he accidentally kills one of them in self-defense.He knows his own life is forfeit. But Much and Marian convince him that perhaps his personal catastrophe is also an opportunity: an opportunity for a few stubborn Saxons to gather together in the secret heart of Sherwood Forest and strike back against the arrogance and injustice of the Norman overlords.

What if Robin Hood was a lousy marksman? What if some terrific writer retold the story of the Outlaws of Sherwood in an entirely new (to me) way? The answer is this book! This awesome book by the even more awesome Robin McKinley whom I grow to love more and more the more I read from her. 

This story is magnificently told as it's not only the story of Robin Hood, it also tells us the story about Will Scarlet, about Maiden Marian (who's not so much as a damsel in distress as a strong, independent heroine), Little John, Friar Tuck, and so many others. Initially I thought that this book would be mainly about Robin Hood and Marian, but there was so much more to the story that I couldn't help but love. 

And even though the book was about more than one-two characters, I grew to love them all. I rooted like hell for Little John and his romance, I was even bigger a champion for Marian and Robin whose romance was anything but fast. It quite literally took them years to tell the other one how they felt and for them to get past the stage of friendship - and I dig that. I dig that a lot. It's like my personal catnip. 

I loved how Robin Hood is shown as a person. Yes, he's a symbol. Yes, he's considered a hero that fights against the awful Sheriff of Nottingham, but he's also a person with doubts, feelings, and dreams. McKinley does an awesome job of portraying all those feelings to the reader and I honestly love her for that.

*The connection with this reading challenge point is a rather loose one, but I thought that it would fit, because Robin Hood is a Saxon and the Sheriff of Nottingham is a Norman, and this book mentions the topic of Saxons not getting on very well with the Normans and vice versa although they both lived in the same country.