Some things in my life are certainties. I like Greek and Norse legends, Shakespeare, King Arthur, Robin Hood, The Three Musketeers and the Lord of the Rings. I like modern twists on the old myths—like Star Wars, Indiana Jones and superheroes.
Another certainty is that, being named Gavin Scott Williams, I’m quite likely to take an interest in checking out a story about Robin Hood where a man named Scott Williams in one of the main characters.
However, just because something is based on a favourite legend, like Sherwood Forest, and shares my name, doesn’t guarantee it’s going to be as epic as I want it to be. "Dead Heroes" shows promise, but it’s not as thrilling as my hopes wanted it to be.
The story should be compelling enough. Taking place in modern Britain, which has increasingly become more chaotic and socialist, Big Brother watching people on cameras and funding a welfare state. Jonathan Eustace is the new Sherriff of Nottingham in this tale, and certain things seem to indicate he may indeed be the original, back from Robin Hood’s day. He’s out to control the population, make it safe, reduce crime—and the only price they have to pay is giving up their freedom.
Struggling against him is an old man, Albert, who claims to be the original Robin Hood. He recruits resistance fighters and bombs government buildings, and beats up police officers. Eustace kills Albert’s daughter, a journalist, which brings him out of a drunken retirement to find out what she was working on, and hopefully avenge her.
To this end, he recruits the afore-mentioned Scott Williams, a man talented at cat burglary and apparently little else. He drinks and plays video games—and though he sounds like a man barely out of adolescence, he’s pushing thirty-five. Hardly the type of man that should inherit Robin Hood’s legacy, but perhaps there’s more to him than meets the eye.
Wilf Morgan’s writing style is engaging enough to read, and at the same time frustrating. When he concentrates on a scene, he can establish tension, suspense, interest and relationships between characters. He can write in a way that intrigues you. But, just as I’m settling into a scene, he’ll pop in a flashback or a flashforward and disrupt the atmosphere. It creates a disjointed flow, one that seems contrived to create a maximum of suspense, by hinting at mysterious details, but serves only to frustrate my engagement with the text.
There are intriguing elements—the relationship between Albert and Eustace seems almost absolute, like gods meeting between millenia, familiar with each other and playing a familiar game. I’d like to see more about the Sherriff/Robin Hood angle and how they came to be in this time and place, where they seem confused about details, mixing up memories with movies and legends. However, they are sure that they are enemies.
Scott seems a waste of a person, until you start hearing about his earlier life as an artist and how he lost his sense of purpose. However, this comes much later in the story after chapters convincing me he’s a useless git, so the sympathy isn’t all that strong.
Some stories benefit from timeshifts and flashbacks, but I feel like there are too many in this one—and it seriously handicaps my ability to enjoy a story that, if it were in order, I think I’d like a great deal. Had the chapters been reorganized for chronology there may have been a sense of growing suspense and tension leading towards the inevitable conflicts—but having it as disjointed as it is makes it hard to care for a character, like Albert’s daughter, who’s alive in one chapter, dead in another, and then younger in a flashback—had I seen her develop, her death might have been much more impactful at the time.
I like the premise and Eustace and Albert are compelling enough to come back and check on them in a few chapters’ time, but this story leaves me wishing the narrative stayed in one place and time a bit longer, because Morgan’s writing is engaging when he really gets into it. The random jumps aren’t worthy of his talents.
There’s a new Robin Hood movie coming out this summer from the people who made Gladiator, and I’ve no interest in seeing it in theatres—I think I’ll wait until it’s on television and skip renting it. I don’t see a necessity for it, especially given it’s Gladiator/Braveheart overtones. I also don’t see the need for Morgan to cripple an engaging premise and excellent narrative with overusing the flashback gimmick, but that’s just me.
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