A review by red_cat9
Lady of Sherwood by Jennifer Roberson

2.0

This has been sitting on my bookshelf for longer than I can remember. I read Lady of the Forest when I was a teenager, and now 20 years later I've finally read the sequel. I love a Robin Hood re-telling, and this was probably great in the 90's, but some things didn't age so well. Marian was a not as empowered as we're used to these days, quite capable in her own way but clearly still relegated to her socially-acceptable place. She also punched a horse at one point just to anger the rider, which didn't make me love her. As for the enemies, Gisbourne and DeLacey were hard to tell apart. They were both sexists motivated by revenge for humiliation and blinded by their own arrogance. One of them reported to the other one, but through most of the story I was confused by which was which because their characters were so similar. Admittedly made worse by the fact that the plot was pretty boring up until about 3 quarters into the story. That's when the robbing from the rich started and about 2 chapters later ended. The ending was also really unsatisfying. There was a major plot point about property ownership, and I hated how that was resolved. To the point where it seemed like there should be another book to resolve it ... but there's not.