Absolutely Brilliant!

I must admit to being enthralled by Venables' Guy of Gisburne novels. He's taken the legend of Robin Hood and turned it on its head. At every step! So what is the truth? I've read so many versions and watched so many movies. In fact Prince of Thieves was screening just as I was reading this. But these--the Guy of Gisburne novels are my far and away favourites.
We have legend and tradition and the need for heroes--but heroes can be used in different ways. As King Richard says to Guy, "I could make use of Hood. Use his legend to bolster my own. And I shall. But I am a practical man. That legend will be easier to control when he’s dead.”
Guy replies, "Legends prosper best when their hero is absent." Cutting both ways--the legend of Richard and that of Hood. So Guy is charged with killing Hood and his leaders. How cunning is the plot that Richard has a mind to set in motion. A masterful stroke by Venables! Machiavellian indeed!
Guy forms a team from those we've met before to hunt the Hood of this series--not the legendary Hood we know, but the vicious, cunning and cruel man he really is. Lady Mélisande, Asif ibn Salah, a resentful and angry Galfrid, and even Tancred are part of that select group.
The elements of Robin Hood are all here--Marion, the Prioress, the loyal followers--but all so different from the popular legend. Hood's trusted companions are so much less than what we love, and so much more vicious. That belief that sees Hood as the man of the people, the Christlike saviour is reduced to a despicable reality here. Hood is a man with his own dark purposes.
For Guy, vengeance will take a different form. At one point Hood says, 'when I die, that is when I am truly born.' At that moment, the true revenge that Guy has in mind is given voice.
At the last Guy decides that, 'the best possible revenge upon Hood—[is] not for him to be lost to posterity, but to become its servant, and an agent for all the good things that he never once believed.' But the story to this moment is paved with hardship, is emotional harrowing and so engaging.
A wonderful novel that brings to the close a thoughtful and fascinating series I have thoroughly enjoyed.

A NetGalley ARC
(March 2017)

When I requested this book I didn't understand that this one was the third of a series (it's the last of a trilogy) and so when I discovered it I was quite unsure: reading it or not reading it?
Lucky for me, I decided to start it and I loved it from the start. Robin Hood is one of my favorite Disney's movies and it's a story that I like a lot, so I was really curious about this... retelling, and I am really glad to have read it in the end, even if I would have preferred for something different, sometimes.
The story is really a good one, with plots and intrigues, but overall we have a man on a mission: Sir Guy of Gisburne has to kill Robin Hood. Hood had done a lot of damages and a lot of people want him dead. But there is just a man that can do it, and he doesn't seem so keen to accept the job. It takes a while, in wich, we start to know our main character (well, I start to, at least, but I'm sure that I would have loved him from his first appearance in the first book. I have to read it, sooner or later!) to him to accept his fate and to take up the almost impossible mission.
Sir Guy is not the knight in the shining armor, it's quite the dark and broody kind of man. He's introverted and it takes great value in loneliness and privacy. But, in the end, he's a man that has to do what is right, and so accept to murder Hood. But it cannot be done by him alone, so he recruits a team of the most reliable and capable people that he knows. And what team this is! I loved all of them and I really want to know more about Melisande, this mysterious and talented woman who has an important past (and quite the reputation!), Aldric, the bright engineer, Asif, the Saracen with a lethal aim, the broody Galfrid, the dreadful Tancred and the knight in shining armor, de Rosselley.
I loved them all. Really. They are fantastic and some of the scenes with them are funny and wonderful and quirky, and I loved them! (I've said it yet? Oh, well... I loved them all! And I want more!!).
Hood is in this story is not the good guy, and ok, at the beginning I was a little bit skeptical because I really like Robin Hood, and to see him like a bad preacher was quite a shock. But I liked the idea and I went on with the reading. And I loved it.
There are some really good plot twist, some of them I really didn't see coming, but they was great and the author is really bright.
I found for all I could have asked in this book: a good story, some really remarkable characters, love, hates, history and fun. A lot of fun, because the author is bright and really good in his writing.
I would read the first two books in the series because I am curious! Even if I read just the last book I didn't have problems with the reading and I understood all, so yay!