Werner's Reviews > Tuck

With this volume, Lawhead brings his King Raven trilogy to a rousing conclusion! The general comments I made on the first two books apply here, too; but the emotional impact of this book nudged it into five-star territory. This is outstanding fiction of its type --a worthy capstone to a thoroughly excellent series. Lawhead has done himself proud here.

In all three books of the series, Bran ap Brychan --Rhi Bran y Hud-- is the central figure, the linchpin of the story. But as we saw much of Scarlett through Will Scarlet's eyes and he plays a key role in the plot, so here, our good-heartened and rotund title character often gives us our viewpoint, and plays a crucial role in the denouement. The author breathes new life into the familiar figures of all these characters of the legends, and more (including Maid Merian); he's also done his historical homework, to bring us a number of real historical personages made flesh under his pen. King William Rufus (who actually did lead his army into Wales) is an obvious example; but Baron Bernard Neufmarche (who really did rule in Hereford, and expand his territory into Wales), William's justicar and adviser Cardinal Ranulf Flambard, and the northern Welsh king Gruffyd also step from the pages of dry history into vivid fictional life in these books. The interspersed "folk" ballads about "Rhyban Hud" in the text and the epilogue are Lawhead's own compositions, but they clearly reflect a good knowledge of the actual ballad tradition and how it was created and transmitted. And though I went into the reading of the trilogy convinced that no one could ever really know when Robin Hood lived (if indeed he did), I came away convinced that Lawhead's Welsh theory is actually the right one.

All the satisfactions of the best action-oriented historical fiction are here: an exciting, fast-moving story with genuine danger and suspense, told in accessible prose; strong characters that you connect to emotionally, clean romance, moral and spiritual sensibility and a clear sense of social justice, basic historical accuracy and well-integrated period detail, and a vivid sense of time and place. It does not exaggerate to call this trilogy a work in the tradition of Ivanhoe; if Sir Walter Scott were still alive, the publisher could probably have gotten him to pen some praise to quote on the book jacket!