The fourth read
I finished my fourth reading of Lady of the Forest <3 I love it. The thing I noticed the most this time was that in my memories, it never had such a coherent story. I remembered the first series of events very clearly, and then the rest of the novel was sort of a blur of dim castles and political machinations and a rather brief sword fight. I'd always thought the parts I remembered took up the first couple of chapters, but in actuality, they span the first three-quarters of the book. All 700 pages takes place over just a handful of days, and events lead from one to another in a very meticulously planned sequence - nothing like the jumble that I vaguely recalled.
The thing that surprised me the most was that it's at least 500 pages before anybody gets to outlawin'. In the back of the book, the author describes how she intends the book to be more of a prequel, explaining how the characters were able to move through the social classes into the positions legend has put them in, which makes sense. It's unfortunate, though, because my favorite things about the Robin Hood legend are the ensemble-cast-outlaw-camaraderie-banter and the gadding about the forest.
Still, the book as a whole is really delightful and incredibly well done. Although Robin bored me at the beginning, he loosens up considerably. Marian is a constant delight - strong, beautiful, believable. The supporting cast is brilliant. The Sheriff of Nottingham is probably the most complex character in the whole thing, and I do appreciate a complex villain :3
One of my favorite things about this book is that every time Robin gets into some kind of physical fight, Marian has to save his bacon. I was kind of expecting the Sheriff to die at the end, but he doesn't - in the very brief climactic sword fight, he's got Robin on the floor on his back, about to run him through, and Marian steals someone's crutch and breaks the Sheriff's arm with it. Gorgeous XD And the Sheriff is incapacitated already by the political events that took place, so he doesn't need to be killed. He's rendered powerless, which is worse punishment. (It's like Akio, hahaha! XD)
One of the things I didn't entirely like was the treatment of sex. In some ways, I thought it was approached well - it was acknowledged that women desire and deserve to have pleasure. But on the other hand, the first time Robin and Marian sleep together, the whole event is portrayed as Marian "healing" Robin with her body. Due to his experiences on Crusade and in captivity, he had locked away any desire, and he couldn't be "a man" unless Marian made him so (with teh hot sexytimes, obvs). I found this kind of degrading to both of them - particularly the idea that having sex with a woman is what makes a man "a man". That's such a dangerous concept for everybody involved.
I bought the sequel on Sunday and I'm really looking forward to reading it, since it'll likely have more of what you'd normally expect from a Robin Hood story: robbing the rich to feed the poor :3
(We also watched Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves the other day - but how much I adore that terrible movie is another post XD)
The thing that surprised me the most was that it's at least 500 pages before anybody gets to outlawin'. In the back of the book, the author describes how she intends the book to be more of a prequel, explaining how the characters were able to move through the social classes into the positions legend has put them in, which makes sense. It's unfortunate, though, because my favorite things about the Robin Hood legend are the ensemble-cast-outlaw-camaraderie-banter and the gadding about the forest.
Still, the book as a whole is really delightful and incredibly well done. Although Robin bored me at the beginning, he loosens up considerably. Marian is a constant delight - strong, beautiful, believable. The supporting cast is brilliant. The Sheriff of Nottingham is probably the most complex character in the whole thing, and I do appreciate a complex villain :3
One of my favorite things about this book is that every time Robin gets into some kind of physical fight, Marian has to save his bacon. I was kind of expecting the Sheriff to die at the end, but he doesn't - in the very brief climactic sword fight, he's got Robin on the floor on his back, about to run him through, and Marian steals someone's crutch and breaks the Sheriff's arm with it. Gorgeous XD And the Sheriff is incapacitated already by the political events that took place, so he doesn't need to be killed. He's rendered powerless, which is worse punishment. (It's like Akio, hahaha! XD)
One of the things I didn't entirely like was the treatment of sex. In some ways, I thought it was approached well - it was acknowledged that women desire and deserve to have pleasure. But on the other hand, the first time Robin and Marian sleep together, the whole event is portrayed as Marian "healing" Robin with her body. Due to his experiences on Crusade and in captivity, he had locked away any desire, and he couldn't be "a man" unless Marian made him so (with teh hot sexytimes, obvs). I found this kind of degrading to both of them - particularly the idea that having sex with a woman is what makes a man "a man". That's such a dangerous concept for everybody involved.
I bought the sequel on Sunday and I'm really looking forward to reading it, since it'll likely have more of what you'd normally expect from a Robin Hood story: robbing the rich to feed the poor :3
(We also watched Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves the other day - but how much I adore that terrible movie is another post XD)