A review by emijoy15
The Traitor of Sherwood Forest by Amy S. Kaufman

2.5

I received this book courtesy of NetGalley, and I’m grateful to them and Penguin for the opportunity to read this in advance of publication! The Traitor of Sherwood Forest will be published on April 29th, 2025. 

I’m going to try and give a truncated version of my thoughts up top to keep this as spoiler free as possible. I think those interested in reading this book should really go in not quite knowing what’s to come. Maybe even especially true for Robin Hood fans, because it was fun to be surprised and excited when familiar elements popped up!

The Traitor of Sherwood Forest follows Jane Crowe, a young woman who becomes Robin's spy inside Kings Houses, where she works in the kitchen. It follows her complicated relationship with the morally gray actions of Robin and his men, and the spiraling events that occur while she becomes increasingly involved.

In short, I have really mixed feelings about this book. It is very specifically an adaptation of medieval Robin Hood ballads, which will clue readers in on what to expect depending on how familiar they are with those texts. It borrows only a few things from more contemporary Robin Hood works. By a few things, I mostly mean that Friar Tuck here is “Tuk”, a Muslim mercenary in the newer tradition of having a Muslim character among the Merry Men (i.e. Djaq in the 2006 series, Azheem in Prince of Thieves). That’s the primary concession made. Otherwise, I can only assume that the oft-used description of Robin’s hair as “fox-colored” is a nod to the Disney movie, which has perhaps contributed to the proliferation of ginger Robins running around. No complaints.

I think the publisher's summary of the book makes it pretty clear that Robin is a violent and dangerous individual, but learning how much of that is true or not is part of the entertainment of the novel so I won’t spoil that. That said, this is definitely gritty. If you want a fun book, this ain’t it. It was hard to predict exactly how this book would end, although I had a pretty good idea about one element of the ending because of my familiarity with Robin Hood lore. The suspense elements at play were quite enjoyable, though!

I’m not sold on Jane as a protagonist. I understand her role in the story, and why she is the way she is, but I wish I had found her more intriguing as a character in her own right, rather than as an avenue to the story being told. Her decisions and logic were frustrating as she became increasingly wrapped up in the world of the plot. I wish I had understood her choices more or could have shaken some sense into her. 

I’m not the most well-versed or academic when it comes to medieval Robin Hood ballads, so I won’t speak too much on how this book presented its interpretations, but it was interesting to see how the author chose to stitch them together into her narrative, and what changes she chose to make.

The Traitor of Sherwood Forest adapts Robin Hood and the Potter, The Geste of Robin Hood, Robin Hood and the Monk, and The Death of Robin Hood. That last one is what makes this list a spoiler, although I was absolutely expecting it. I screeched a bit when the prioress was introduced early in the story, and knew immediately that Robin would die. The prioress, here named Ibota, was a marvelous addition, and I’m glad that she was present throughout the novel.

I don’t like gritty Robin Hood stories. I just don’t. I liked elements of this book and elements of what it was trying to do. Some of the writing was quite lovely. It was descriptive and evocative (although it perhaps overused similes), and that includes descriptions of violence. Parts of this book were so gory and unpleasant that I gagged. Your mileage may vary, of course. 

However, regardless of my mileage, I don’t want to read about Robin torturing people. Which he does, twice. Once, while killing Guy of Gisborne and once while killing the sheriff. While killing the sheriff, he specifically calls the act “fun”, and views it as a “reward”. Little John actually mercy kills the sheriff against Robin’s wishes. 

I had a look at the Robin Hood and Guy of Gisborne ballad, and in it, Robin cuts off Guy’s head and then mutilates it so it is unrecognizable. That’s already a lot to handle. In Traitor, Robin mutilates Guy while he’s still alive, and Guy dies from the torture of it, and then loses his head. That’s a lot to handle! There are a few other changes to the ballads adapted, but this one was rough. I didn’t like it. Okay, as a reader, I wasn’t supposed to. I’ll admit that. But as a reader, it downgraded my opinion of the book, too. It just felt like it went too far.

There are multiple points in this book that really smack the reader over the head with the message that Robin Hood is not actually a hero. Multiple people talk about it, and Jane explicitly states it. Robin is a genuinely scary, horrifying person. The last third of the book reads a bit like horror, but it’s Robin Hood who wants to slowly torture people to death. While his character is nuanced enough that you can see how he might have been a good person once, he starts to seem like an irredeemable psychopath. I think that’s a bad faith interpretation of the medieval ballads. I get what the book wanted to do and say. I even think it’s kind of cool to build a story entirely around only the medieval ballads themselves, but this isn’t the message I wanted from that theme.


Here, have some pretty writing that I liked. This was so nice, it made me want to be there. A palette cleanser:

“A massive oak held court in the forest’s center, thick and strong among the birch trees’ snow-white bones. Seashells danced on ropes throughout the oak’s branches, tangled white and gray and pink among the crisping leaves. The shells sang like tiny church bells when the wind swept through.”

I do think that if you want a gritty Robin Hood book, this is a really good one. Jane’s slow descent from wonder to confusion to horror is fascinating. The use of the medieval ballads as a base is unique, if not done in a way that I personally like. I don’t want a gritty Robin Hood book, though. I don’t particularly care if the idealized, romanticized Robin Hood is not the same as the Robin Hood of medieval ballads. I like him to be idealized and romanticized. I like empathetic heroes. I don’t think ultra-violence is required for Robin Hood to be a subversive character and story. I like Robin Hood. I don't really want a book to give me any reason to hate him. 
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