{"id":6135,"date":"2009-04-23T22:01:19","date_gmt":"2009-04-24T03:01:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.epictales.org\/treskillard\/2009\/04\/23\/stephen_lawhead_s_hood_a_quick_review\/"},"modified":"2009-04-23T22:01:19","modified_gmt":"2009-04-24T03:01:19","slug":"stephen_lawhead_s_hood_a_quick_review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.epictales.org\/treskillard\/2009\/04\/23\/stephen_lawhead_s_hood_a_quick_review\/","title":{"rendered":"Stephen Lawhead&#8217;s Hood &#8211; A Quick Review"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>This blog post is in response to a comment\/question from Steven Till<\/strong>, who runs a most excellent blog over at <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.steventill.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">www.steventill.com<\/a><\/strong>.  His blog is about, as his title says:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Medieval History (Middle Ages History)<\/li>\n<li>Historical Fiction<\/li>\n<li>Fantasy Books<\/li>\n<li>Fantasy Novels<\/li>\n<li>Fantasy Writing<\/li>\n<li>Writing Fiction<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>All things my blog readers and I are fascinated by!<\/p>\n<h3>Steve&#8217;s Comment:<\/h3>\n<p>Hi Robert, I was looking for your review to Hood but couldn&#8217;t find it. I posted a review of Hood a while back on my site as well, and was curious to get your take on it. I haven&#8217;t gotten around to reading Scarlet yet. If you could recommend one series from Lawhead, which one would you choose? I like your site and have already subscribed to your blog. Thanks for stopping by my site earlier!<\/p>\n<h3>My Answer:<\/h3>\n<p>Thanks, Steve, for stopping by, and even subscribing. Wow. The reason you didn&#8217;t find my review of Hood is that I had read the book before I started my blog, and never got around to writing about it!<\/p>\n<div style=\"float:right; margin-left:10px; margin-bottom:10px\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/exec\/obidos\/ASIN\/1595540857\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.EpicTales.org\/images\/Robert\/External\/LawheadHood.jpg?w=1200\" alt=\"Hood by Stephen Lawhead\" title=\"Hood By Stephen Lawhead\" \/><\/a><\/div>\n<p><strong>Alas, here&#8217;s my tardy thoughts on Hood:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>A very fascinating, orignal take to put Robin Hood in Wales.<\/strong> It does make a bit of sense, doesn&#8217;t it? Stephen&#8217;s critiques of the ballads is a little harsh, though, and I&#8217;m not sure if he&#8217;s fully justified sticking him in Wales based on the inconsistencies in the legends.\n<p><strong>But even if Robin wasn&#8217;t Welsh<\/strong>, <em>surely<\/em> someone like him must have existed in Wales in just that time period of Norman conquest. So even if he&#8217;s not Robin, you have to say, well, <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.epictales.org\/treskillard\/king_arthur_hill_to_be_excavated\">this could have happened<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li><strong>The writing is excellent<\/strong>, barring the slow middle. The motivations of everyone is believable. The ending picks up nicely. Particularly, his introduction of Baron Neufmarche is masterful.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>My daughter, <a href=\"http:\/\/adele.epictales.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Adele<\/a><\/strong>, is just so-so on the book, but that has a lot to do with her own research and strong opinions of Robin Hood.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Thanks for prodding me for a critique of Hood<\/strong> &#8230; very important with Tuck in my clutches and calling loudly to be read.<\/p>\n<div style=\"float:left; margin-right:10px; margin-bottom:10px\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/exec\/obidos\/ASIN\/1595540865\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.EpicTales.org\/images\/Robert\/External\/LawheadScarlet.jpg?w=1200\" alt=\"Scarlet by Stephen Lawhead\" title=\"Scarlet By Stephen Lawhead\" \/><\/a><\/div>\n<p><strong>I do recommend Scarlet<\/strong>, as Scarlet&#8217;s portion of the book is in 1st person and very well written. Lawhead does some very creative things there.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Lawhead is at his best in his Song of Albion<\/strong> series (and I don&#8217;t think I&#8217;m in the minority in thinking this). A contemporary, portal fantasy, but he uses a lot of ancient historical stuff to ground the work. Highly recommended. <\/p>\n<p><strong>Byzantium was good as well.<\/strong> Haven&#8217;t read Patrick. I didn&#8217;t enjoy the Celtic Crusades as much. Not bad, but didn&#8217;t grab me. <\/p>\n<p><strong>Lawhead&#8217;s Arthurian work is excellent<\/strong>, particularly the first three, Taliesin, Merlin &amp; Arthur.  The latter books after these three suffer a bit, but they&#8217;re not bad, and I read them all, including Avalon, the contemporary Arthur novel where he comes back in modern day Britain. <\/p>\n<p>-Robert<\/p>\n<p>p.s. I just read <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/steventill.com\/2009\/03\/19\/review-of-hood-by-stephen-lawhead\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">your more thorough review<\/a><\/strong> after writing my above notes &#8230; looks like we agree on quite a bit. That slow middle was probably important to Lawhead, as he seems to really enjoy bards and druids. They ground his historical works deeper in the past.<\/p>\n<p>Views: 69<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<div class=\"entry-summary\">\nThis blog post is in response to a comment\/question from Steven Till, who runs a most excellent blog over at&hellip;\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.epictales.org\/treskillard\/2009\/04\/23\/stephen_lawhead_s_hood_a_quick_review\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &ldquo;Stephen Lawhead&#8217;s Hood &#8211; A Quick Review&rdquo;<\/span>&hellip;<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6136,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2,3,83,28,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6135","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-christian-sf-fantasy-blog-tour","category-fiction-tours","category-on-wales","category-on-writing-fiction","category-stephen-lawhead","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.epictales.org\/treskillard\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/LawheadHood7.jpg?fit=200%2C300","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p67v0M-1AX","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.epictales.org\/treskillard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6135","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.epictales.org\/treskillard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.epictales.org\/treskillard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.epictales.org\/treskillard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.epictales.org\/treskillard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6135"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.epictales.org\/treskillard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6135\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.epictales.org\/treskillard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6136"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.epictales.org\/treskillard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6135"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.epictales.org\/treskillard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6135"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.epictales.org\/treskillard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6135"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}