A brilliant exploration and evocation of the myth of Herne the Hunter. Gilbert waves together a rich tapestry of history, mythology and original storytelling from the fourteenth century to a dystopian future of climate breakdown and authoritarian rewilding.

The writing is rich and captivating with some gorgeous imagery and lyricism and some moments of humour dark and mischievous. There are shades of Robert Holdstock and Susan Cooper but Gilbert's style is also highly original and she had created a remarkable tale of the changeable but ensuring power of mythology rooted in the natural world.

This was a really interesting and very enjoyable narrative, both in terms of content and structure. Told in a series of interlinking and chronological vignettes, the novel follows the influence of Herne the Hunter on the land, the wood and the people that interact with it. Each vignette has it's own self contained plot which goes to make up a part of the larger whole and each section has it's own tone. This means that some of the chapters are fairly comical in tone (I particularly enjoyed the chapter that is basically a long set up for a Shakespeare joke), while others are distinctly sinister and still others are poignant. Overall, I thought this was an ambitious and well executed novel and I will definitely look for Zoe Gilbert works in the future.
I received a free copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for a fair and honest review.

Herne the hunter is tracked through space and time as his beloved forest is subsumed by urban sprawl in Gilbert's folkloric tour de force.
With its intoxicating, chameleonic voice and boundless imagination, Mischief Acts is British folklore as you've never read it before: dangerous, sexy, troubling, daring, savage, an exhilarating race through time and space, weaving together the ancient and the contemporary.

Utterly beautiful writing and atmospheric yet this just missed the mark for me. Rather than one linear story it's an intricate weaving of several folk stories that revolve around the mythical figure known as Herne that jumps through timeliness and foreshadows future stories. It's very clever, but for me the pacing just feels off. Just as I was getting into one story we move on, leaving little time to decompress.

The overall descriptions really are wonderful though. You can vividly recall this overgrown, wild wood that brims with life and nature and I really enjoyed these parts of the narrative. However I started to feel more and more detached from the book as the stories progressed, and by the end I found I just wasn't that interested anymore.

Brilliant writing, but I wanted something a bit more substantial.

I love tales with mytholoy and folklore, especially where it blends into the modern world. It made me look more into Herne the Hunter and the mythology surrounding him.

“The episodes related below reveal the trials and triumphs of one myth through time and ever-shifting space. We follow Herne the Hunter, whose time began (in one version of his myth, at least) around the fourteenth century, and whose space was the Great North Wood, a forest that covered a swathe of what became South London.”

My thanks to Bloomsbury Publishing U.K. for an eARC via NetGalley of ‘Mischief Acts’ by Zoe Gilbert in exchange for an honest review. On publication I purchased its hardback and audiobook editions.

Gilbert opens this themed collection with an Introduction by a fictional professor on the figure of Herne the Hunter and then follows this with sixteen tales set chronologically from 1392 to 2073. Each tale is preceded by a poem/chant that reflects its theme. It concludes with an Appendix titled ‘The Birth of Myth’ that places the stories in their historical and cultural context.

I adore trees and woods and the mythic figure Herne the Hunter has long held a special place in my heart as representative of the spirit of the forest. When I learnt that he was the focus of Zoe Gilbert’s second work on British folklore, I couldn’t wait to read it.

While I found the entire collection excellent, the story ‘Hurricane’, chronicling the Great Storm of 1987 had special significance as it impacted upon my work in the environmental sector.

I have embraced the renaissance in recent years of British folklore and feel that Gilbert’s writing continues this tradition. She has great skill in storytelling and I found her writing lyrical and immersive.

Overall, ‘Mischief Acts’ proved an impressive collection of linked British folk tales, which was beautifully presented with a stunning cover design.

Highly recommended.

This wasn't quite what I expected, so I didn't end up enjoying it as I thought I would. I liked the beginning, and initially found the structure of the novel to be quite interesting, but most of the stories collected, beyond the first two, didn't really hold my interest. I think a lot of people will enjoy it, but it wasn't for me.

I really enjoyed Zoe Gilbert's 'Folk' and this book sounded very intriguing. It's essentially made up of a number of short stories all centred around the central figure of Herne the Hunter.

Anything to do with folklore and mythology is totally my jam so I was curious to see what Gilbert was going to do with these themes. The approach she takes is very ambitious and showcases her talents as a writer. It is difficult for an author to make each story stand alone and unique and at times they feel like they were each written by a different writer. Although this makes it interesting to read, it did at times make it feel incohesive and disjointed.

The strengths in the novel lie in the earlier chapters where we get a sense of the nebulous, liminal beginnings of Herne and those he encounters. As things move forward in time, I felt less invested in the stories and felt Herne faded more and more into the background. This may have been a deliberate choice to reflect the position of folklore and mythology in the modern world, and how it might be understood in the future, but I missed that sense of otherworldliness that permeated the first stories in the book.

I really did enjoy reading this book and Zoe Gilbert has again produced something rather different but it didn't quite hold my interest in the way I hoped it would when I started reading the book.

I fell in love with the cover and then I fell in love with the stories. It reminded me of Pook of the Hill, a set of stories connected by a common thread, Herne the Hunter.
There's folklore, there's history, and there's fantasy: the author did an excellent job in mixing elements and turning them into an original and riveting book.
It's the first book I read by this author but it won't surely be the last.
Highly recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine

Thank you to the publisher for my eARC copy of this book. Unfortunately I didn’t love this book and therefore didn’t finish, I just didn’t connect with this one. Not for me, sorry.

Herne - Green Man, trickster, Robin Goodfellow - crops up through the ages in the woods of Essex.

Lyrical and folkloric, Gilbert's writing has evolved to capture the voice of the centuries. Beautiful, knowledgeable, but lacks the hook which pulls the reader in.

With thanks to NetGalley and Bloomsbury Publishing for the ARC.

Thank you NetGalley and Bloomsbury Publishing for the e-arc of Mischief Acts by Zoe Gilbert in exchange for my honest and unbiased review.

The first chapter of this book isn’t written in the form of a poem and was actually quite a deterrent for me, I recall thinking that this really wasn’t my cup of tea and I wasn’t sure that I could manage a whole book written as a poem, but I persisted and as the book continued found that each chapter was written in a distinctive style. Each style aligned to the setting world in which the story was encompassed.

Although, I must be honest and state that for me this felt like a collection of short stories, rather than the sum of a novel. The short stories in themselves are written strongly, with the world building and supporting characters being delivered in a strong and concise manner. Despite that feeling, the narrative of Herne the Hunter losing his hunting talent and being cursed to wear Stag Antlers as the price for saving his life, who subsequently commits suicide and comes back to life as a legendary spirit that haunts the magical Great North Wood, originally located just south of London, UK.

The stories themselves flow through time line, with characters reappearing and the themes of magic, mystery, hunting and mischief recurring. Gilbert truly displays her versatility and skills as a story teller as she illuminates tales of the death and destruction of the Wood through time, in parallel with the diminishing of magic, myth, and mischief until their resurgence in future lands in parallel with the regrowth of belief in the importance of nature.

If you are a looking for a novel that will take you out of your comfort zone, that encourages literary experimentation and of course a love for folklore, then you will absolutely love this book. I found the stories themselves engaging and enjoyable in the majority, but there were some that just didn’t work for me.

Zoe Gilbert carries out her own mischievous acts as her linguistic prose transmutes from Middle Ages refrains to 20th century modern day and then reverting back to broken and miswritten phrases into the end of the 21st.
The woodland has always been a place for folklore and english myth and the author explores how these change and mutate over time as the Great North Wood, what was once a vast oak forest stretching from Southwark to Lewisham and down to Bromley, has been steadily reduced in size until there are now only pockets left.
Chapters are different stories and characters (although Herne, Bearman and others re-appear in different guises) from 1392 to the clearances, the 1987 storm and then into the future with climate change where the remaining woods are restricted access and housing is being cleared to replant and rewild.
It is not an easy read as you need to adjust to the language every chapter and there is no narrative arc except the woods itself and Herne.

These are new folk tales for the times we are living in, where woodland is recognised as vital to our survival and a revival in legends may follow.

It definitely felt more like a short stories collection rather than a full length novel, everything is linked, in the same way than The Archipelago by Cristopher Priest is build, but each stories could almost be read independently. It's quite lyrical, I enjoyed the atmosphere and the dreamlike feeling it has to it. I would definitely recommend this book.

I nearly gave up on this book in chapter one. It was written like a poem, and I am not a fan of poetry. I wasn't sure I'd get through a novel of it. But luckily I persisted, and soon realised that each chapter of this novel is written in a different style, most of which aren't poems. In fact, although it has many features that aren't to my own taste, I did quite enjoy it overall, and I think many readers are going to enjoy it greatly. I can see it getting on the literary prize lists as well.

Gilbert started out as a - very successful - short story writer, and you can still see that in her two novels to date (this being the second). It is rather like a series of interlinked short stories, although there is a much stronger underlying narrative thread than in her first novel. The stories are chronological, starting with the poem style tale set in the 14th century. It introduces the characters around which the whole book revolves. Herne the Hunter is cursed to wear the antlers of a stag, losing his talent for hunting. He subsequently kills himself. He then becomes a legend, a spirit, haunting the 'enchanted' Great North Wood (a real place, south of London).

As the stories move on in time, the characters of Herne and his antagonist, Bearman, reappear again and again. We meet them in the time of the Puritans, at the fire in Crystal Palace, on 1960s housing estate, in 2020s suburbia, and further out, into a future where the woods have been 'rewilded'. As the years go by, magic and mischief are pushed out by modernity, whilst the woods diminish and are tamed. But then towards the end of the story, as we stray into the future, we see people rediscovering their love of myth and mystery, and nature being encouraged to thrive again.

The variety of styles, characters and settings give Gilbert a chance to show that she is a versatile and talented writer. She could write a whole book well in any of these styles, I think. Some stories are really very well written indeed, and I felt quite gripped by. I particularly liked the penultimate story, narrated by a future-dweller whose mangled versions of current sayings and expressions were almost as much fun to read as they must have been to write.

Readers who like original, literary novels that are not afraid to experiment will likely love this. It's also a must-read of anyone with an interest in British folklore. It reminded me in some ways of David Mitchell's 'Cloud Atlas' so fans of that should definitely try this. For me personally, I enjoyed it mostly (leaving aside a few chapters where it was too much style and not enough substance for my taste). It included too many elements that I personally find annoying for me to give it an unqualified high rating. But I can see it would be five star quality to others who enjoy different types of book to me.

I'd initially scrolled right past this on Netgalley without its registering, until a friend posted a review making clear that it was a) about Herne the Hunter and b) set in the Great North Wood, where I live. Which I wouldn't say was terribly obvious from the cover, or the title Mischief Acts, but then I suppose marketing departments' influence on modern publishing probably militates against putting out a book called Oi, Sarll, You Div, This Is About Herne The Hunter Down The End Of Your Garden, Isn't It?. Initially, though, the book wasn't clicking with me, to the extent that at times I wondered whether I wouldn't have been better off not knowing. Perhaps part of it is down to that core combination of elements; despite a Hill and Tavern named for him nearby, Herne is not a presence I've ever really associated with these woods; to me he's more a Windsor figure, with secondary Sherwood resonances thanks to ITV. More than that, though, I just wasn't getting enough of a hit of particular times and places. Mischief Acts is told as a cycle of what could almost pass for short stories, united by location but separate in time. This is a format I love, and one used by some of my favourite books, including Simak's City and Alan Moore's Voice Of The Fire. But that equally means that I have (too?) high standards for them, and that I really need a particularity of the where and when to make one sing. Whereas in the early chapters here, I just wasn't feeling that. I'm not going to complain about the Great North Wood and Effra having those names used for them before there's evidence, that makes sense just for clarity's sake. But doing it during one of the chapters purported to be an account written by a character at the time is pushing it, and when a nymph in 1500 starts thinking in terms of "microclimate, invertebrates present", the register is so far out as to jar. I couldn't quite put my finger on it until 1606, when reference is made to "the unseemly performance of Mould-My-Cockle-Bread, & the lewde Mirth resulting therefrom", words I could only hear uttered in Mark Heap's Upstart Crow voice. Which was when I realised: this didn't feel like the Great North Wood, this felt like the deliberately vague and general wood when Upstart Crow ventures outside, which in turn derives from that handwaving suggestion of woodiness on the Shakespearean stage.

And yet, that idea that the wood has nymphs, but only at times when people would have expected them, as when "England flickers in the dawning light of the Renaissance"? That I liked. And little things like this kept me going until, as it neared the present day, the book started to feel much better anchored. That translucent stage woodland, the stylistic decisions which didn't sell me, the unreliable narrators who were telling on themselves a little too blatantly*, all fall away, going up in smoke along with the Palace itself by 1936. The sixties moment of magic and free love reawakens those dormant nymphs; Hell, even the story of a faltering suburban marriage ten years ago, exactly the sort of thing with which I'm normally reluctant to engage, was compelling. Partly it helped that, unlike much writing in that vein, it is at least ready to admit mobiles and email exist; more than that, though, it's tied to a particular place in the wood, one I can see and feel as I read in a way I couldn't for the earlier eras. And the human details are caught as well as the sylvan ones, as when the mother awaiting a daughter's return from university resolves to "check Laura's room has not silted up with drifting furniture again". And then on past the present, into a future of reforestation, wolves, and the plausibly infuriating slogan 'Beat the Heat' even as the water and the power fail. Which I find well on the optimistic side but hey, it's a start. Not to mention the way traces of the lives which used to happen in the Wood will resurface after decades – "Things move around, rise up, poke through" – which is something I've seen myself. Finally, a resolution of sorts is attained, before – in a move which some might see as a failure of nerve, but I found pleasingly audacious – the book pretty much explains its own working with an appendix presented as a late 21st century lecture. Which is also the first time over all those centuries that anyone riffs on the historically inevitable joke about Herne's antlers**.

But aside from being closer to the now, there's something else about those chapters which I noticed: they seldom feature much Herne. Who, when you think about it, he's always been a shadowy figure, hasn't he, more than a protagonist? And maybe he just works better there. He's described here as a "rascally psychopomp", but often that's a character who intervenes in the story, rather than taking centre stage. The recurring idea of him as connected to Harlequin made me think of Jerry Cornelius, and how he also tended to find himself edged out of his own stories as he went along, and that even before the culture at large started to wonder whether bad boys who don't play by the rules were really such a desirable thing to encourage. Not that you should necessarily trust me on any of this, mind; perhaps part of what got my back up was simply that the antagonist who recurs in so many forms begins as Bearman, and that even after bringing wolves back, the rewilding stops a little too soon: "And they weren't going to bother with bears, not after that commotion in Bristol." Hell, maybe it's just injured hyperlocal pride because the story spends more time at the other end of the ridge than in the areas of the Wood I know best, though I still can't help thinking Herne would have been a natural match for the very mildly scandalous delights of Beulah Spa. If nothing else, though, this is a solid attempt to answer a question asked through time, and still raised far too often now by those who should know better: "What use is a wood?"

*I say that; the near-future guard is still a little too free with the malapropisms. I can absolutely believe "escape-goat" and "sneer campaign", but "bat-shit gravy"?
**Seriously, the moment you know you've gone native while studying English literature is the first time you genuinely laugh at a cuckold's horns gag.

It took a bit for me to get used to the writing style in this book, but once I did, there was no turning back.
Such an original piece of work and other-wordly even though I recognised place names from the story. This added to the enchantment and mystery.
A sequence of interconnected stories set spanning hundreds of years, full of mischief and occasionally terror, as the title suggests.

A must read for anyone into folklore and mythical stories.

Not for kids!

Absolutely loved this book, each part of the story flowed so well into the next and created something magical. Can't wait to stock it.

I'm not sure when I picked up the habit of skipping verse in novels - but much of the blame must be laid with Tolkein and his many impersonators. Get me some raucous characters with a song cycle telling of a mythic dead and that's back-story I am going to miss. I mention it here because Mischief Acts starts with a long bit of verse - Gilbert's own origin story for her central character (though he appears in many forms if he appears at all) Herne The Hunter. I wonder if she originally did an Old English version which was too difficult to parse - it is presented as a contemporaneous piece of literature from 1392, as is the conceit (this book is full of conceits) is this is a scholarly collection of tales about Herne and the Great North Wood -publish about sixty years hence. In form it is a set of short stories, some pastiche in style, set int he wood, and then in the parts of London which usurped the wood (Norwood / Crystal Palace) linked by folk-tales and supernatural sightings. Intertwined are some short folk songs, and the occasional narrative "charm" a theme perhaps for each story.

I've read books which do this kind o thing before, the central theme threaded through independent stories, and have often found them a little disappointing as - like with straight short story collections - there are usually some week stories. lack of a continuing narrative can also harm the pacing and drive of a novel, but neither of these are problems here because the quality stays remarkably consistent, and the story of the wood is compelling enough. Part of this is the decision to end with a couple of future tales, and a suggestion of rewilding the Great North Wood. It manages to maintain its folklore and myth content to a decent compliment to real world developments. But set over this kind of timescale you can see a London creep: the 1877 Victorian "scientific enquiry" story mentions a Crystal Palace which will be transported and latterly destroyed in the 1936 story. The book has the playfulness of its illusive lead (and his many European counterparts in the Union of Mythical Forest Beings).

Mischief Acts is a very accessible bit of literary trickery. Amongst its impressive attributes is an ability to discuss, enjoy and revel in the folklore and "old ways" without lionising them. There is a sense of melancholia that sets in with the Enclosure Act but mourning the old does not come from demonising the new (the Crystal Palace notwithstanding - or not standing at all anymore). In allowing herself the future "Re-Enchantment" section, Gilbert provides the book with a kind of folklorish hope -even in a world of spiralling global temperatures. Like many folk tales, there are stories here with strange and even grotesque outcomes, as befits a character here made by hanging himself. But they are also stories of communities in and around the woods - the dryads and small gods are given meaning by their interactions with humans. A wonderful piece of work (and the verse is good too).







...........................

Surprising, wonderful and exciting.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publishers for letting me access an advance copy of this book in exchange for my feedback.