I just finished the first section of Parke Godwin's Sherwood. I'm not sure if I'll finish. Obviously it's a Robin Hood story, but I'm not sure I like it.
He changes the whole Richard/John thing into Harold (the Saxon King)/William the Conquerer (only we know Harold isn't coming back, as he didn't historically and he is quite dead in the book. Now all that's just fine, though it's hard to sympathize with as the Saxons are, historically, getting what's coming to them. It's much easier to sympathize with the Normans as a) I am one, and b) they're just doing to the saxons what the Saxons did to the Britons (Welsh and Celts) a few hundred years before.
But even with trying to not let that influence my view, I'm not sure I like it. Godwin tries to make Ralph Fitzgerald (the book's Sheriff of Nottingham) sympathetic and give reasons that we can accept he has a "claim" on Marian. I guess. A dream and the fact that he's good looking hardly seem like a temptation to abandon a man she's been falling more and more in love with for 200 pages and that she's married. Plus Godwin has a problem with imagery. He describes Ralph's sickly pale and scarred body and then in the SAME SENTENCE tries to tell me that he's a looker. Right. Ok.
Character motivations are also a problem. Why is Marian stuck on this Sheriff guy? Is he TRYING to make the story more like Guenivere? (Godwin has also done an Arthur cycle -- one I'm seriously tempted never to consider reading). Also, why is William so damned unreasonable? He wants the Saxons to heel, he's even impressed with Robin's ability to lead and keep order, but he still makes it impossible for Robin to actually do anything besides go outlaw. Seems like narrative convenience. Finally, I'm supposed to feel pain that this priest (Tuck's superior) is conflicted? He gives me one (3-5 pages, tops) scene where the father feels like the community conscience and then when he kills a man IN SELF DEFENSE, a man who was coming to destroy lands as well as attack the father himself, the priest goes all to pieces.
Godwin assumes too much attachment or knowledge about how he perceives his characters before introducing their crisis key moments. The reader has to fill too much in.
The other problem is his narrative style. Instead of giving you a conversation, he'll summarize the conversation. He narrates the characters meeting up, their small talk, but then the key information is summarized instead of given as dialog. He also change POV frequently. He'll give a third person narrative of an enounter, then immediately switch to a first person account of that persons feelings. I don't mind the change in perspective, but the machine gun changes in person without even indicating whose internal monologue we're getting is jarring.
So, I probably won't finish. Thing is, there are very few books that I have never finished once starting. And to be honest, Godwin's problems aren't more serious than M.Z.B.'s problems with Mists of Avalon, which I did finish. I just don't have the same attachment to the Robin Hood story as I do Arthuriana. Should I feel guilty? Or just dump it back in the library drop box without regret?