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gillianw's review
4.0
Oh my gosh, this was fantastic! A light fantasy retelling of Robin Hood, it’s exactly the kind of book adventure I didn’t know I needed until I started reading it - and now I need more! Good thing there are more books in the series because this one ends on a heartbreaking cliffhanger and I need to immediately dive into book 2 to find out what happens next.
joshhall13's review
5.0
The author is very talented. She created a very believable earthy-druidic-idealistic tale of the life before the legend of Robin Hood.
It would be an easy 5-star, but at times I felt like it dipped into Harlequin Romance novel territory.
It would be an easy 5-star, but at times I felt like it dipped into Harlequin Romance novel territory.
teresab78's review
5.0
****Reviewed for Prism Book Alliance****
Story Review
Where to begin… This story was epic! Truly epic! Set in 1180 Yorkshire, Greenwode is the story of Rob of Loxley and Gamelyn before Rob becomes Robyn Hood. It was rich and vibrant and magical. Everything, no matter how mundane seeming at the time, had a place in the story. The lore of the pagans was well told, though I have no idea of its accuracy, and its contrast to the Christian religion poignant. I was so invested in Rob and Gamelyn’s relationship that every hardship that came their way affected me. All the characters were well developed and real feeling.
I often liken my reading experience to watching movies. The scenes are set so well you can see it play out in your head. Some are Blockbuster Action Flicks, some are m/m’s version of a chick flick, and some are epic adventures. This was like Braveheart and the new Robin Hood with the magic and length of Lord of the Rings. You need to have time dedicated to experiencing Greenwode.
The end demanded part two to be “read” immediately and I am listening to it as we speak. I highly recommend for anyone who loves magic, ill fated love and stories set in the middle ages.
Narration Review
I loved the narrator’s voice! He captured the personalities of the characters perfectly (with a different voice for each) and I was immersed in the location and time. My only complaint is that it was sometimes hard to tell the scene transitions within chapters, especially if it involved the same set of characters only a short time later. On a whole I loved the experience although I felt it took a long time to get through for the number of pages the ebook is listed at. I think I could have read it much faster and it wouldn’t have felt sooo long. Something to think about if you are trying to choose between the audio and print.
I would like to thank Dreamspinner for providing me with the audiobook of this title in exchange for my honest opinion.
Story Review
Where to begin… This story was epic! Truly epic! Set in 1180 Yorkshire, Greenwode is the story of Rob of Loxley and Gamelyn before Rob becomes Robyn Hood. It was rich and vibrant and magical. Everything, no matter how mundane seeming at the time, had a place in the story. The lore of the pagans was well told, though I have no idea of its accuracy, and its contrast to the Christian religion poignant. I was so invested in Rob and Gamelyn’s relationship that every hardship that came their way affected me. All the characters were well developed and real feeling.
I often liken my reading experience to watching movies. The scenes are set so well you can see it play out in your head. Some are Blockbuster Action Flicks, some are m/m’s version of a chick flick, and some are epic adventures. This was like Braveheart and the new Robin Hood with the magic and length of Lord of the Rings. You need to have time dedicated to experiencing Greenwode.
The end demanded part two to be “read” immediately and I am listening to it as we speak. I highly recommend for anyone who loves magic, ill fated love and stories set in the middle ages.
Narration Review
I loved the narrator’s voice! He captured the personalities of the characters perfectly (with a different voice for each) and I was immersed in the location and time. My only complaint is that it was sometimes hard to tell the scene transitions within chapters, especially if it involved the same set of characters only a short time later. On a whole I loved the experience although I felt it took a long time to get through for the number of pages the ebook is listed at. I think I could have read it much faster and it wouldn’t have felt sooo long. Something to think about if you are trying to choose between the audio and print.
I would like to thank Dreamspinner for providing me with the audiobook of this title in exchange for my honest opinion.
siavahda's review
5.0
I AM NOT EVEN A LITTLE BIT OKAY.
THIS BOOK STOLE MY BREATH AND MY HEART AND MY SOUL AND I'M PRETTY SURE I'M NEVER GETTING THEM BACK
Beautiful, clever, devastating, I will try and write something more coherent later right now I am just NOT OKAY
THIS BOOK STOLE MY BREATH AND MY HEART AND MY SOUL AND I'M PRETTY SURE I'M NEVER GETTING THEM BACK
Beautiful, clever, devastating, I will try and write something more coherent later right now I am just NOT OKAY
ellelainey's review
3.0
Book 1: Greenwode
POV: 3rd person, multi-character
Pages: 370
Star rating: ★★★☆☆ (3.5)
This was a difficult one, because there were times when I was kind of bored reading it, wondering when it would end, and there were times that I was completely intrigued by the story, needing to know what happened next.
The story is a take on Robin Hood, which is fine, but I don't really know much beyond the movies, so I can't comment on whether it's sticking true to the legends or history. But, if you take it on the basis of “rob from the right to feed the poor” then this story has twisted that to become “take from the Christians to better the Pagans”. But, more on that later.
Strangely, the story is told like a play, with a Prelude and Entr-acte's. And, to be honest, most of the Entr-acte's were completely unnecessary in the format they were in. They're classed as, literally, “between the acts”, but most of the time they showed things that were relevant to the overall story, so I don't understand why they were separated the way they were.
The multi-POV meant that we got to see everything that was happening, but I'm not entirely sure that some of the POV's were needed. Marion continually gave us her POV, to show how Rob and Gamelyn's moods appeared to someone on the outside, who didn't know what was going on between them, but we really didn't need to see that to get the point. Similarly, most of the time Marion was with one or the other and didn't need her own POV, nor did her mother. I get that we needed Adam's POV, to see what happened with George, and the Abbess showed us her plans for Gamelyn clear enough. But there were plenty of times I read a POV and just wondered why it was needed, because it didn't add anything to the story or our understanding of it.
To make things even more confusing, the story was told in the usual past tense, but slipped into present tense during so-called “dreams”, memories and hallucinations. The first time it happened, the change was clearly marked in italics, but the second wasn't and the third...well, I have no idea what happened to the third, because it slipped in and out of italics like nothing on earth. It really jarred the reading to slip into a different tense, for no obvious reason, when the past would have worked just fine. But the fact that they were so haphazardly arranged made it difficult to know when they'd pop up and when I'd have to switch my thinking from one tense to another.
The speech, I'll admit, reminds me more of old-fashioned Glaswegian than anything close to English or Welsh, but I got the feeling that it would be hard for people to read and understand if they weren't familiar with any of the British dialects that still sound this way, which could hamper their enjoyment of the story.
For me, I think the real problem was that there was a mixture of lack of information (timeline/ages) and an overabundance of information (the religions), while the story continually repeated the same “scenes” over and over again, just with new words (sometimes) and the same results.
I found the first 10% to be a little haphazard. A lot was going on, there was no clear timeline and there were quite a few “filler” scenes that weren't necessary, such as Gamelyn learning to use a bow, missing Rob on his visits and such. I understand the point of these scenes was to show us the growing affection between Gamelyn and Rob that even they were unaware of, but it was actually done a lot better later in the story, before the feelings grew complicated, but during scenes that actually had a lot more bearing on the overall story arc. This was another problem of repeated scenes – Gamelyn being disappointed to find that Rob wasn't there, hinting at feelings – where only one of the few had an actual impact and was necessary to the story.
The story began by digging right into the action, with Rob discovering Gamelyn, but then stagnated for about 10-15% until Rob was blooded. After that Prelude, things didn't go much of anywhere for a while and then, after Rob was blooded, there was a whole lot of dancing about and doing nothing until he and Gamelyn finally realised how they felt about each other.
I also have to admit that while I found Rob completely enchanting and Gamelyn intriguing, they acted like teenagers hopped up on their hormones half the time. Their chemistry together was kind of beautiful at times and exhausting at others. There were times when I cried over them – after the Green and after the nightmares – but there were equally enough times when I just wanted them to get it over with already, confess their love and runaway together, because it was taking such. a. long. time.
Because the timeline doesn't tell us how old they are, ever! it made it hard to judge whether they really were teenagers or not. There's the hinted implication that they were ten years old when they first met – but it doesn't show up until nearly 70% of the book, so we spend all that time not knowing how old they are. By physically going back to check the years between their first meeting and the “several years ago” jump into the future, it seems to have been ten years that passed, but since all we knew was that Rob hadn't reached 15 yet, in the Prelude, he could have been 20 or 24 or anything in between. He could even have been 18 or 19 by the time Chapter 1 came about. To be honest, I just don't get why it wasn't hinted at or downright spelled out in the story; it wouldn't take much effort to slip in, “you're five years from being fifteen” or “he was twenty now”. It just would have cleared up so much.
As characters, I loved Rob. He was very much the “Robin Hood” cheeky chap, with a dark task to undertake and a lot of responsibility on his shoulders. I equally loved Gamelyn's daring and his banter with Rob, the way he was so completely oblivious to their chemistry with each other, until jealousy shoved it in his face. However, what I didn't love was the constant, repetitive “my God versus your God” arguments and Gemelyn rushing into Rob's arms right before/after calling it a sin.
I didn't see the point of Marion at all. She added nothing to the story that was worth anything – she was an alternative love interest, when Gamelyn's family questioned his visits to their croft; she was supposedly Rob's anchor and as equally gifted, yet did absolutely nothing with those gifts of worth; she fought the “independent woman” battle with her father, which came completely out of the left field and had no effect on the story. The only useful thing Marion ever did was act as a buffer between Rob and Gamelyn, spending time with Gamelyn when they were younger and teaching him how to use a bow and arrow, while Rob was off becoming the Hooded One. The more of the story I read, the more Marion became “surplus”, because even when her tynged spoke directly to her and warned her to go to Rob, urgently, to save lives, she dilly dallied for days, allowing the end of the book to happen when it should have been prevented. So just what was the point of that warning or Marion, in the end? It's not even as if she “tried” and failed to see it through; she was too chicken to do it, then when circumstances fell so that she ended up going anyway, she told NO ONE about the imminent danger or what had to be done. Marion kept quiet for far too long and, in the end, became just as much an impetus for what happened at the end of the story as the Abbess. Only, she actually drove the story forward.
There was a heavy theme of Paganism vs Christianity in the book that was – as an atheist, I felt – unfairly slanted towards paganism. There was only one instance of the Pagan belief being “bad” or “evil” through physical actions, but even that was justified away, as though that made it okay. The entire time that Christianity was shown on page, it was either because of Gamelyn floundering over whether to hold to his beliefs or not or because Christians were evil and hunted the Pagans, to murder them all. I get that it's a very real part of history that can't be overlooked, especially in the context of the story, but there was never once where Christianity was shown in the same favourable light as Paganism and it was noticable.
For me, the blurb gave too much away and told us things that never actually happened. This part “A peasant from Loxley will wear the Hood and, with his sister, command a last, desperate bastion of Old Religion against New” is never actually explored in the story. For about 80% of the book Rob's only intention was to learn his gifts, take care of his family and be with Gamelyn. He never once had any intention of fighting or commanding anything. He briefly mentioned, about 80% in, that he thought their people deserved better, but it was never within the context of actually doing anything about it.
I was stunned by the ending. I hadn't expected that everyone would survive, but when those who did die were such prominent characters, it really surprised me. I just know there's going to be a whole lot of inappropriate laying blame and feeling responsible for it, because certain people didn't do what they said they would or what they should have done. And, to be honest, I'm not looking forward to it.
Then, just when I thought it was over, after four pages of Author's Notes, there's an extra story! “Night Before Acre” is stuck in around 96%, called “a tale of the Wode” and features Gamelyn. I have NO idea why it's stuck so far at the back and I only looked, because I wondered why there was still another 4% after the author's notes, though if I'd been more awake at the time, as it was 3am when I looked, I probably would have thought it advertisements and not bothered to look. Again, this is told in present tense until Gamelyn “wakes” (from what is not italics, but is apparently a dream). The few pages are actually important, so I have no idea why they're not included even as an Epilogue, but shoved right to the back of the book. Yet, at the same time, they kind of make me angry, because it implies that Gamelyn's become something that he knows better than to become and made everything before then pointless.
Overall, this story was just too choked with niggly little problems, for my to give it anything over the 3.5. I liked the romance, the chemistry and the overall plot, but because of these niggles, there was no real “enjoyment” as such, of the process of reading the book. I didn't devour it. It was actually a read that felt laboured and endless, right until the end. With the repetition of events, conversations and themes that, in the end, not all proved necessary; the boring and predictable way Gamelyn floundered over stupid decisions only for them to end in disaster, as I knew they had to, because everything he did ended badly; and the abrupt, cliffhanger ending; it was just a little too predictable in places and tedious to go through the repetitions over and over again.
~
Favourite Quote
“But he had trusted. Gotten in too deep and then dove further, let Gamelyn's innocence cozen him, let that lovely body and what Rob had thought was a heart laid open in juniper-green eyes crack open the carapace of his own heart. Just a crack. Just a possibility.
Just wide enough to bleed him out.”
“From fear into love. It was enough to be here, be with Rob, think of him and deny Hell...no, embrace Hell.
Because if Rob was going to Hell, Gamelyn wasn't going to let him go alone.”
~
POV: 3rd person, multi-character
Pages: 370
Star rating: ★★★☆☆ (3.5)
This was a difficult one, because there were times when I was kind of bored reading it, wondering when it would end, and there were times that I was completely intrigued by the story, needing to know what happened next.
The story is a take on Robin Hood, which is fine, but I don't really know much beyond the movies, so I can't comment on whether it's sticking true to the legends or history. But, if you take it on the basis of “rob from the right to feed the poor” then this story has twisted that to become “take from the Christians to better the Pagans”. But, more on that later.
Strangely, the story is told like a play, with a Prelude and Entr-acte's. And, to be honest, most of the Entr-acte's were completely unnecessary in the format they were in. They're classed as, literally, “between the acts”, but most of the time they showed things that were relevant to the overall story, so I don't understand why they were separated the way they were.
The multi-POV meant that we got to see everything that was happening, but I'm not entirely sure that some of the POV's were needed. Marion continually gave us her POV, to show how Rob and Gamelyn's moods appeared to someone on the outside, who didn't know what was going on between them, but we really didn't need to see that to get the point. Similarly, most of the time Marion was with one or the other and didn't need her own POV, nor did her mother. I get that we needed Adam's POV, to see what happened with George, and the Abbess showed us her plans for Gamelyn clear enough. But there were plenty of times I read a POV and just wondered why it was needed, because it didn't add anything to the story or our understanding of it.
To make things even more confusing, the story was told in the usual past tense, but slipped into present tense during so-called “dreams”, memories and hallucinations. The first time it happened, the change was clearly marked in italics, but the second wasn't and the third...well, I have no idea what happened to the third, because it slipped in and out of italics like nothing on earth. It really jarred the reading to slip into a different tense, for no obvious reason, when the past would have worked just fine. But the fact that they were so haphazardly arranged made it difficult to know when they'd pop up and when I'd have to switch my thinking from one tense to another.
The speech, I'll admit, reminds me more of old-fashioned Glaswegian than anything close to English or Welsh, but I got the feeling that it would be hard for people to read and understand if they weren't familiar with any of the British dialects that still sound this way, which could hamper their enjoyment of the story.
For me, I think the real problem was that there was a mixture of lack of information (timeline/ages) and an overabundance of information (the religions), while the story continually repeated the same “scenes” over and over again, just with new words (sometimes) and the same results.
I found the first 10% to be a little haphazard. A lot was going on, there was no clear timeline and there were quite a few “filler” scenes that weren't necessary, such as Gamelyn learning to use a bow, missing Rob on his visits and such. I understand the point of these scenes was to show us the growing affection between Gamelyn and Rob that even they were unaware of, but it was actually done a lot better later in the story, before the feelings grew complicated, but during scenes that actually had a lot more bearing on the overall story arc. This was another problem of repeated scenes – Gamelyn being disappointed to find that Rob wasn't there, hinting at feelings – where only one of the few had an actual impact and was necessary to the story.
The story began by digging right into the action, with Rob discovering Gamelyn, but then stagnated for about 10-15% until Rob was blooded. After that Prelude, things didn't go much of anywhere for a while and then, after Rob was blooded, there was a whole lot of dancing about and doing nothing until he and Gamelyn finally realised how they felt about each other.
I also have to admit that while I found Rob completely enchanting and Gamelyn intriguing, they acted like teenagers hopped up on their hormones half the time. Their chemistry together was kind of beautiful at times and exhausting at others. There were times when I cried over them – after the Green and after the nightmares – but there were equally enough times when I just wanted them to get it over with already, confess their love and runaway together, because it was taking such. a. long. time.
Because the timeline doesn't tell us how old they are, ever! it made it hard to judge whether they really were teenagers or not. There's the hinted implication that they were ten years old when they first met – but it doesn't show up until nearly 70% of the book, so we spend all that time not knowing how old they are. By physically going back to check the years between their first meeting and the “several years ago” jump into the future, it seems to have been ten years that passed, but since all we knew was that Rob hadn't reached 15 yet, in the Prelude, he could have been 20 or 24 or anything in between. He could even have been 18 or 19 by the time Chapter 1 came about. To be honest, I just don't get why it wasn't hinted at or downright spelled out in the story; it wouldn't take much effort to slip in, “you're five years from being fifteen” or “he was twenty now”. It just would have cleared up so much.
As characters, I loved Rob. He was very much the “Robin Hood” cheeky chap, with a dark task to undertake and a lot of responsibility on his shoulders. I equally loved Gamelyn's daring and his banter with Rob, the way he was so completely oblivious to their chemistry with each other, until jealousy shoved it in his face. However, what I didn't love was the constant, repetitive “my God versus your God” arguments and Gemelyn rushing into Rob's arms right before/after calling it a sin.
I didn't see the point of Marion at all. She added nothing to the story that was worth anything – she was an alternative love interest, when Gamelyn's family questioned his visits to their croft; she was supposedly Rob's anchor and as equally gifted, yet did absolutely nothing with those gifts of worth; she fought the “independent woman” battle with her father, which came completely out of the left field and had no effect on the story. The only useful thing Marion ever did was act as a buffer between Rob and Gamelyn, spending time with Gamelyn when they were younger and teaching him how to use a bow and arrow, while Rob was off becoming the Hooded One. The more of the story I read, the more Marion became “surplus”, because even when her tynged spoke directly to her and warned her to go to Rob, urgently, to save lives, she dilly dallied for days, allowing the end of the book to happen when it should have been prevented. So just what was the point of that warning or Marion, in the end? It's not even as if she “tried” and failed to see it through; she was too chicken to do it, then when circumstances fell so that she ended up going anyway, she told NO ONE about the imminent danger or what had to be done. Marion kept quiet for far too long and, in the end, became just as much an impetus for what happened at the end of the story as the Abbess. Only, she actually drove the story forward.
There was a heavy theme of Paganism vs Christianity in the book that was – as an atheist, I felt – unfairly slanted towards paganism. There was only one instance of the Pagan belief being “bad” or “evil” through physical actions, but even that was justified away, as though that made it okay. The entire time that Christianity was shown on page, it was either because of Gamelyn floundering over whether to hold to his beliefs or not or because Christians were evil and hunted the Pagans, to murder them all. I get that it's a very real part of history that can't be overlooked, especially in the context of the story, but there was never once where Christianity was shown in the same favourable light as Paganism and it was noticable.
For me, the blurb gave too much away and told us things that never actually happened. This part “A peasant from Loxley will wear the Hood and, with his sister, command a last, desperate bastion of Old Religion against New” is never actually explored in the story. For about 80% of the book Rob's only intention was to learn his gifts, take care of his family and be with Gamelyn. He never once had any intention of fighting or commanding anything. He briefly mentioned, about 80% in, that he thought their people deserved better, but it was never within the context of actually doing anything about it.
I was stunned by the ending. I hadn't expected that everyone would survive, but when those who did die were such prominent characters, it really surprised me. I just know there's going to be a whole lot of inappropriate laying blame and feeling responsible for it, because certain people didn't do what they said they would or what they should have done. And, to be honest, I'm not looking forward to it.
Then, just when I thought it was over, after four pages of Author's Notes, there's an extra story! “Night Before Acre” is stuck in around 96%, called “a tale of the Wode” and features Gamelyn. I have NO idea why it's stuck so far at the back and I only looked, because I wondered why there was still another 4% after the author's notes, though if I'd been more awake at the time, as it was 3am when I looked, I probably would have thought it advertisements and not bothered to look. Again, this is told in present tense until Gamelyn “wakes” (from what is not italics, but is apparently a dream). The few pages are actually important, so I have no idea why they're not included even as an Epilogue, but shoved right to the back of the book. Yet, at the same time, they kind of make me angry, because it implies that Gamelyn's become something that he knows better than to become and made everything before then pointless.
Overall, this story was just too choked with niggly little problems, for my to give it anything over the 3.5. I liked the romance, the chemistry and the overall plot, but because of these niggles, there was no real “enjoyment” as such, of the process of reading the book. I didn't devour it. It was actually a read that felt laboured and endless, right until the end. With the repetition of events, conversations and themes that, in the end, not all proved necessary; the boring and predictable way Gamelyn floundered over stupid decisions only for them to end in disaster, as I knew they had to, because everything he did ended badly; and the abrupt, cliffhanger ending; it was just a little too predictable in places and tedious to go through the repetitions over and over again.
~
Favourite Quote
“But he had trusted. Gotten in too deep and then dove further, let Gamelyn's innocence cozen him, let that lovely body and what Rob had thought was a heart laid open in juniper-green eyes crack open the carapace of his own heart. Just a crack. Just a possibility.
Just wide enough to bleed him out.”
“From fear into love. It was enough to be here, be with Rob, think of him and deny Hell...no, embrace Hell.
Because if Rob was going to Hell, Gamelyn wasn't going to let him go alone.”
~
micksland's review
5.0
5 stars
2020-2021 Book Bingo: Book with a Color in the title (hard mode: not black, gray, white, or red)
First, this beautiful retelling of “Robin Hood” should immediately go on the reading list for any Anglophile. Second, this book ripped my heart out and fed it to the wood chipper, à la “Fargo”. It’s one of the best fairy tale retellings I’ve ever read.
The entire novel oozes a love for Celtic mythology and a desire to pay respectful homage to the original legends while modernizing them. In this version, Robyn of Loxley and his sister Marion are born to be the incarnations of the Celtic Gods Cernunnos (The Hunter) and the Maiden. Their culture is slowly being stomped out by sociopolitical forces beyond their control, and their lives are upended by the arrival of young Lord Gamelyn. Gamelyn, a Good Catholic (TM), is torn between his loyalty to his church and family on one hand, and a burgeoning love for Robyn and his clan on the other. This leads to a very heart-wrenching dilemma that is especially poignant for LGBT readers, but can apply to anyone who has ever felt torn between two conflicting loyalties. The author painted an exceptionally beautiful portrait of psychological turmoil and couched in the contrast between the cold stones of a medieval castle and the wild, dark beauty of the pagan woods. I cannot say enough good things about the beauty of the writing.
This is not a happy story. It is not a story that I could have read it one sitting; it is dense and sometimes traumatizing. It is beautifully written and well-crafted, and it left me in tears in my hotel room tonight. I’ll definitely read the sequels, but I may need a few months to recover emotionally first.
2020-2021 Book Bingo: Book with a Color in the title (hard mode: not black, gray, white, or red)
First, this beautiful retelling of “Robin Hood” should immediately go on the reading list for any Anglophile. Second, this book ripped my heart out and fed it to the wood chipper, à la “Fargo”. It’s one of the best fairy tale retellings I’ve ever read.
The entire novel oozes a love for Celtic mythology and a desire to pay respectful homage to the original legends while modernizing them. In this version, Robyn of Loxley and his sister Marion are born to be the incarnations of the Celtic Gods Cernunnos (The Hunter) and the Maiden. Their culture is slowly being stomped out by sociopolitical forces beyond their control, and their lives are upended by the arrival of young Lord Gamelyn. Gamelyn, a Good Catholic (TM), is torn between his loyalty to his church and family on one hand, and a burgeoning love for Robyn and his clan on the other. This leads to a very heart-wrenching dilemma that is especially poignant for LGBT readers, but can apply to anyone who has ever felt torn between two conflicting loyalties. The author painted an exceptionally beautiful portrait of psychological turmoil and couched in the contrast between the cold stones of a medieval castle and the wild, dark beauty of the pagan woods. I cannot say enough good things about the beauty of the writing.
This is not a happy story. It is not a story that I could have read it one sitting; it is dense and sometimes traumatizing. It is beautifully written and well-crafted, and it left me in tears in my hotel room tonight. I’ll definitely read the sequels, but I may need a few months to recover emotionally first.
booksthatburn's review against another edition
emotional
mysterious
reflective
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
GREENWODE is a queer and intricate retelling of Robin Hood's story, using the lesser-known character of Gamelyn as his rival (and perhaps lover), with Marion as his sister. Rob and Marion are of the Old Religion, something which manages to escape Gamelyn for a long time as he assumes, with a colonizer's confidence, that people he likes would of course believe the same things as him, even as reality shows that they do not. Rob and Marion are learning their roles from their parents, the current Hunter and Maiden. Their father is an important person in the Old Religion as well as having authority over the wood through the legal authorities. The antagonists who gradually (or not so gradually) become apparent end up driving much of the escalation of danger and distress, eager to stamp out the Old Religion by any means necessary, writing off any participants as tainted by evil. It doesn't matter to them that this includes almost everyone in the Greenwode, what matters is that they think God is on their side and that death is better than living in sin.
The afterword describes GREENWODE as the beginning of a duology, but as of the time of this review there are five books in the series. Regardless, it is the first part of a story, and does a wonderful job of telling a complete tale while setting the stage for something deeply complex to follow on its heels. I grew up religious and had my own journey away from a descendent of Gamelyn's faith, complete with its rancid homophobia, misogyny, and distaste for other beliefs while holding up its own rituals as important and meaningful. This lent a degree of believability to Gamelyn's inner turmoil, as otherwise his back and forth over whether to just be a freely sexual being with someone who loves him seems strange and illogical. That's because it is illogical, you can't reason someone out of something they didn't reason themselves into, and Gamelyn didn't reason himself into homophobia. It was part and parcel of his intense devotion to God, a facet previously unspoken woven into his foundational beliefs. For this part, Rob is bewildered by Gamelyn's internalized homophobia, as it clearly hurts him and Rob can't see anything helpful or meaningful in a religion that encourages someone to feel badly about things that are wonderful and good. I like Marion as sister to Rob while having her own friendship with Gamelyn that exists next to their relationship with each other.
I love this and I'm eager to see how things develop. The ending manages to simultaneously close up things in a very satisfying way and set the stage for more to happen.
The afterword describes GREENWODE as the beginning of a duology, but as of the time of this review there are five books in the series. Regardless, it is the first part of a story, and does a wonderful job of telling a complete tale while setting the stage for something deeply complex to follow on its heels. I grew up religious and had my own journey away from a descendent of Gamelyn's faith, complete with its rancid homophobia, misogyny, and distaste for other beliefs while holding up its own rituals as important and meaningful. This lent a degree of believability to Gamelyn's inner turmoil, as otherwise his back and forth over whether to just be a freely sexual being with someone who loves him seems strange and illogical. That's because it is illogical, you can't reason someone out of something they didn't reason themselves into, and Gamelyn didn't reason himself into homophobia. It was part and parcel of his intense devotion to God, a facet previously unspoken woven into his foundational beliefs. For this part, Rob is bewildered by Gamelyn's internalized homophobia, as it clearly hurts him and Rob can't see anything helpful or meaningful in a religion that encourages someone to feel badly about things that are wonderful and good. I like Marion as sister to Rob while having her own friendship with Gamelyn that exists next to their relationship with each other.
I love this and I'm eager to see how things develop. The ending manages to simultaneously close up things in a very satisfying way and set the stage for more to happen.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Homophobia, Classism, Death, Religious bigotry, Confinement, Murder, and Sexual content
Moderate: Physical abuse, Blood, Bullying, Emotional abuse, Misogyny, Sexism, Alcohol, Genocide, Violence, Fire/Fire injury, and Injury/Injury detail
Minor: Cursing, Pregnancy, Medical content, Rape, Medical trauma, and Death of parent
patriciomas's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
mysterious
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.25
Greenwode is an interesting beginning to a queer retelling of Robin Hood. In this telling, Robin (called Rob here) is a druid and follower of traditional English religion who becomes childhood friends with Gamelyn (Guy of Guisbourne), a Christian nobleman. Their paths cross multiple times throughout the story. They become lovers, but all the while the story (and many of the other characters) remind us and them of the near-impossible-to-bridge gulf between their worlds.
There are a lot of dreams/prophecy in the book, and most of the time it's pretty opaque - not because it's poorly explained, but because it's opaque to the characters. It's well-done. Rob's central conflict is whether he and Gemelyn can truly be together - or whether, as his parents and mentor believe, they are fated to be enemies. Gamelyn's is whether he can reconcile his love - and lust - for Rob with his Christian faith. I enjoyed Gamelyn's side of things more, but that may be because he has more going on.
I can't say I loved the ending, but it was pretty clear where things were going. The last few chapters were difficult to get through because I could tell that the hammer was about to drop, it was going to be bloody, and that Rob and Gamelyn's relationship couldn't survive in the short-term). It clearly gives us the setup for the story to come - the proper retelling of Robin Hood.
I plan to read the sequel - the second book in the originally-planned duology. But, at the recommendation of the person who suggested the series to me, I'll stop there, because it gets apparently goes directions most readers don't want it to go afterward.
There are a lot of dreams/prophecy in the book, and most of the time it's pretty opaque - not because it's poorly explained, but because it's opaque to the characters. It's well-done. Rob's central conflict is whether he and Gemelyn can truly be together - or whether, as his parents and mentor believe, they are fated to be enemies. Gamelyn's is whether he can reconcile his love - and lust - for Rob with his Christian faith. I enjoyed Gamelyn's side of things more, but that may be because he has more going on.
I can't say I loved the ending, but it was pretty clear where things were going.
I plan to read the sequel - the second book in the originally-planned duology. But, at the recommendation of the person who suggested the series to me, I'll stop there, because it gets apparently goes directions most readers don't want it to go afterward.
crtsjffrsn's review
5.0
I'm going to simply start off by saying this was incredible! This refreshing and unique take on the tale of Robin Hood had me gripped to every single page. I love when an author can take a time-honored tale and truly make it her own, telling it in a way that hearkens enough to the original legend but has enough new layers to tell a new story. The layers that J. Tullos Hennig has added here are indeed many, but they also feel very natural to the story. There's almost an air of realism to this fantasy and even an element of historical fiction through the portrayal of religion and the quest of zealous Christians to stamp out anything they view as "pagan" or "evil". It's also a true coming-of-age tale for both Robyn and Gamelyn (and, of course, Marion, too, though we don't quite see as much of her here). The only disappointments I have are that I let this sit on my shelf for so long before reading it and the fact that I don't have the sequel at hand to pick it up and start in on it immediately. Definitely one of the best fantasy novels I've read in some time and certainly one of the better books I've read recently overall. Very highly recommended!