Book Log 28/2015 - Toby Venables: Hunter of Sherwood: Knight of Shadows - Guy of Guisburne #1

[jacey]

Though you might expect the hero of this tale to be Robin Hood, in an interesting twist Venables' hero is Guy of Guisburne, and Hood is a figure of chaos, Guy's nemesis, though in this book he only appears as a secondary figure.

Guy is a kind of 007 to Prince John, who in this telling is the good brother and Richard the Lionheart is the shit who virtually abandoned all responsibilities in England and drew off all the resources he could monetise to support his endless warring in the Holy Land. That Richard cared nothing for England is much is pretty well a historical truth. Richard did say that he would sell London itself if only he could find a buyer. John, however did have his flaws, though they seem to have been overlooked here.

Sir Guy is given a task by Prince John, steal a holy relic--the jewel encrusted skull of John the Baptist--before Philip of France can get hold of it. Most of the action takes place in France, but at the same time as the forward action is progressing, we learn of Guy's backstory, his struggle to become a knight, with all that entailed, and his relationship with Robert/Robin Hood when they were both mercenaries, ending up surviving the Siege of Hattin, a huge defeat for Christendom.

Guy's enemy is Tancred, the rogue Templar de Mercheval, and his henchman Fulke. Both Tancred and Fulke are pretty nasty characters. Fulke is bad enough, but Tancred is as mad as a bag of spanners, believing himself to be blessed by God and the dispenser of His justice. He wants the relic for himself. On his side Guy has his somewhat opinionated squire, Galfrid, forced upon him by John, and a mysterious and beautiful stranger, Melisande, a woman who fights better than any man, with assassin style training. There's also a Q to Guisburne's 007 in the personage of Prince John's armourer, Llewellyn, who provides Greek fire and gadgetry.

This book doesn't work perfectly, there's one point where Guy's plan is frankly suicidal and yet he survives it, however the things that do work, work very well indeed. The characterisation is excellent, I especially like Galfrid who makes a brilliant sidekick. The characterisation of Hood also shows what have always been taken as his good points to be severe flaws that make him almost impossible to reason with. Guy himself is a sympathetic hero and we learn a lot of his backstory, which all adds to the character building.

In essence this is a set-up book for future stories and I think we can expect very interesting things from Sherwood in the future.