A Son of the Rock

Head of Zeus, 2022, 445 p.

After tackling Arthurian legend in By Force Alone Tidhar turns his reworking of the many and varied Matter of Britain onto that of Robin Hood. The book’s title is a little inappropriate, though, as that gentleman is not its principal focus. To be sure we have Maid Marian, Will Scarlett, Sheriff(s) of Nottingham, Much, Alan-a-Dale and, later, Little John and a Friar Tuck, but we also have the Lady Rowena, Isaac of York and his daughter Rebecca, plus Guy of Gisbourne (all taken from Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe – as Tidhar acknowledges in his afterword – but altered here) to contend with. Not to mention a riff on Frankenstein wherein a simulacrum of Jesus is animated from (authenticated) relics collected by a man called Gilbert Whitehand. And the other Hood, Little Red Riding. This is not quite the familiar tale, then. Emphasising this, the forest is the domain of the fae and Nottingham is festooned with images of The Green Man.

We start off in the time of anarchy where Stephen and Maude (not the historical Matilda, note) are vying for the crown of England and Will Scarlett takes part in a robbery of the London headquarters of the Knights Templar. This London is your typical fantasy city modelled on an imagined Dark Age, with ale-houses, cutpurses and rogues of various kinds and a casual attitude to life. How realistic this depiction is of day-to-day existence in such a place is another matter. However, “Men have murdered women with impunity since the beginning of time,” is sadly still an apposite observation.

From thereon, Knights Templar not being ones to cross, Will has to look out for his life. After his companions in the raid start to die off in inventive ways he decides to light out for Nottingham, barely surviving a multiple stabbing because his intended assassin has a soft spot for him. In this tale women are as hard-edged and ruthless as the men. Sometimes more so. But sweet and demure they are not.

We also have two characters who may be transgender – or at least cross-dressing. Alan a Dale, who plays a harp made from the bones of his sister and is seeking vengeance on the man who killed her, sometimes manifests as Alanah Dale and there is a priest called Birdie who is in touch with the fae and discovered to have breasts and female genitalia.

Rowena is far from the character found in Ivanhoe. She is a hard-nosed dealer in dwale, the drug of choice in Nottingham, and subject to as much double-dealing and betrayal as drug baronesses ought to be accustomed to.

Many of the men have returned from the Crusades and subject to the usual ex-servicemen grouses, “Nobody gives a shit about returning soldiers.” There is a constant background drip of information on events in the Holy Land and the fortunes of the various Kings of the times.

The characters tend to speak in a down to earth demotic style as of our times, which is anachronistic as far as the setting goes but this is fantasy; in that respect perhaps anything goes. There was a nice aside on the origins of dietary custom evolving from the Church’s ban on meat on Fridays. The common people soon worked out that fish was not meat and so indulged themselves, “everybody likes a loophole.” One of the Sheriffs has a side line in procuring piscicultural delicacies.

Tidhar can certainly illuminate character and spin a story but we also have here an abundance of allusion. I confess I admired the reflection of a prisoner on discovering himself to be incarcerated, “Then I awoke and found me here on the cold cell’s hide,” (a Spoonerism will always get me, one based on a Tiptree quote from Keats still more so) but the book is over-stuffed with this sort of thing. At times it seems as if no reference cannot be elaborated on. A meeting with a Jack and his friend Jill calls up a description of that male name’s connotations – some steal from giants, others go down hills, or bring frost, or light up like a lantern. Some even go around murdering people. But the page or so riffing on the Rumpelstiltskin story was surely unnecessary.

Pedant’s corner:- “off of” (just ‘off’, no ‘of’ please,) “are at each others’ throat” (throats,) “the plague comes and goes like the tides into London” (‘the’ plague. In 1145? There were earlier plagues but ‘the’ Plague came to England in 1348. Okay it’s an altered history but “Plagues come and go like the tides” would avoid this particular anachronism.) “In the Jewry a mob of good Christians attack shops” (a mob attacks.) “He think of Joan” (thinks,) ass (arse,) supressed (suppressed,) “with bones wove in their hair” (woven.) “Perhaps this bides well for the knight” (bodes well,) Raynard (elsewhere Reynard.) The rest of the men were knights and unsavoury looking civilian” (civilians.) “There’s a tapestry on the wall behind him that look like he’d” (that looks like,) “‘no matter whence it comes from’” (OK, it was in dialogue but ‘whence’ = ‘from where’, so, ‘whence it comes’.) Greensleeves (as a tune this is supposed to have been written by Henry VIII [born 1491] though it is most likely later. Another anachronism, then.) “The gate open” (opens.) “The small monk’s shoulder’s fall (shoulders,) Rebeca (x1, Rebecca,) “gristly corpses” (grisly, I would think,) “shakings his head” (shaking.) “In his time Rome had not yet even bothered to turn its attention to this shitty little island” (Julius Caesar first invaded Britain in 55 BC. Before his time, then,) dwarfs (dwarves,) “Little Boy Blues” (Little Boys Blue,) Poitier (Poitiers?) “A solider learns to sleep where he can” (soldier.)