Someone has done the unthinkable: made Sir Guy into a humane person.

Why did it take so long? Why?

This book was the perfect beginning of a series.

Spoiler

What I liked:

As I said, Guy is humane in this version. Throughout the book, there are flashbacks to certain incidents of his life where his morality and his sense of the world is changed or sharpened. You understand why he hates Richard; you understand why he hates Robin Hood. It’s so deliciously written that you just come to enjoy Sir Guy as a character who is in every bit as clever as Robin Hood.

He teams up with Mélisande who is the perfect match for Sir Guy. She is feisty, she is clever, and she knows how to handle herself in a fight. It was interesting to think that she would be the replacement for Marion. Alas, some things just cannot be. But it leaves hope for a meeting between her and Guy again.

And then we meet Robin Hood, who Guy was once friends (or partners) with. I guess this is one of the reasons I ranked it a star down. The way that the story was being written, I assumed Robin was the type of guy who just didn’t see eye to eye with Sir Guy. Which is cool, but having him kill a prostitute was a bit of a stretch for me. A part of me felt like it was just a bit out of character for him. I liked him being some kind of cocksure guy who thought he could do anything because it thrilled him. I think I was looking for more of a fall-out between friends type thing. To be honest, I wasn’t sure if there was any time of friendship.

Another reason I pushed it down was that there was no healthy balance of dialogue and exposition. The book was bogged by tons of exposition. A part of me hopes that it was written that way because it was the first of the series and you just needed to lay it all out there so the reader could understand. It wasn’t bad exposition by any means! There was just way, way too much.

Overall, this series has a lot of promise and I will certainly pick up the next book when it comes out.