Robin Hood

By David B. Coe
Tor, $7.99, 298 pages

“And this is how the legend began…”

As far as novelizations of the movie go, this one is fairly typical. It reads like a fantasy novel with special effects thrown in, though the characters are dynamic and interesting. Having spent a life in the service of King Richard in his campaigns across Europe, Robin Longstride returns to England bearing the sword and armor of a dead nobleman. The nobleman’s father and widow, the Maid Marion, welcome Robin, crippled as they are by taxes and the despotic sheriff of Nottingham. With his collection of merry men and a mysterious past, Robin helps the common people of the shire unite in the face of civil war.

David B. Coe, as an experienced sci-fi/fantasy writer, takes the reader into the world of Robin Hood with a steady hand, guiding them through some history that’s played rather fast and loose, but still manages to show a time when the world was changing, charged with a good underdog-rising-of-the-people story.

The many legends of Robin Hood coalesce in this novel. Was he a commoner? A nobleman? A revolutionary? A bandit? In this, he is all and none of them, which seems to most aptly reflect this well-known English legend.

Reviewed by Axie Barclay