Scarlet: King Raven Trilogy: Volume 2: King Raven Trilogy, Book 2 [Paperback]

I have both audio and ebook versions of this book. I bought the audio for the whole trilogy because it was cheaper than paper or ebooks. I bought the ebooks after almost descending into tears at the terrible audio rendition. If you are thinking of buying Adam Verner's narrated copy - don't

More on that below, but first the book itself (as this review will show up in all versions of the book on Amazon):

I loved the idea behind this book, and Lawhead is an accomplished writer. The things he does really well, in my opinion are (1) writing engrossing and very exciting battle and fight scenes (2) building up some wonderful tensions where people are treated unjustly and harshly, that make the books compelling. His characterisations are also competent. This book is worth reading.

Lawhead often has diversions using material from Celtic legends and mythology, and this book is no exception. Some people find that slopws things down a bit, but personally I think it adds to the richness of his settings.

Will Scarlet is in prison at the start of this story, and narrates the tale of how he got there to his confessor, a priest called Odo. We learn how he fell in with Bran ap Brychan, and a tale of political intrigue unfolds that makes this far more than a "robs from the rich, gives to the poor" tale (although we have that too).

I thoroughly recommend the book, but I give it four not five stars because it maybe lingers a little overlong in places. Also, as a Welsh speaker, I had a number of issues with Lawhead's research, particularly of the Welsh language. If you don't care about such things, skip my next two paragraphs!

Robin Hood, we are told, is in fact Rhi Bran y Hud. This is apparently 'King Raven, the Wizard'. Except it is not. Rhi is probably an old word for king, found in names such as Rhodri, but Welsh grammar is different from English, and King Raven would have to be 'Bran-rhi' (or 'Bran-ri' but I won't complicate things with the mutation rules). Rhi Bran, if we grant 'Rhi' as a noun for 'King' would mean 'King of Ravens'.

'Hud' means 'magic' or 'enchantment'. But that is not so bad. 'James y Bara' ('James the bread') would be 'James the baker', so 'Bran the Magic' could be 'Bran the sorceror'. Sadly though, he says 'hudolion' is 'sorceress', when in fact it is the plural - it means enchanters. A female enchanter would be 'hudoles'. He also ignores his own pronounciation guide in the book by suggesting 'hud' rhymes with 'hood'. In fact it is more like 'heed' or 'hid'. Worst of all, in two places he calls the Welsh language 'Gaelic'. Gaelic is the related but very different Celtic language of Ireland (and Scotland, as brought there by the Irish Scotii). Welsh is "Cymraeg" (he could have called it "cumric" if he liked).

All in all I got the distinct impression his knowledge of Welsh ended with a reading of a dictionary.

Sad as that might be for Welsh speakers, it does not really hurt the story, and is not a reason not to read the book. Thus I recommend it and hope you enjoy it.

But as I said above, don't get the audio version. The reader is an American affecting a British accent (badly - he often slips into some kind of southern drawl, and for a long time I thought he was aiming for Irish!) He reads competently, but manages to mispronounce every single Welsh word without exception. This is unbelievably sloppy for a book set in Wales - especially as it even contains a pronounciation guide. Though far from perfect, this was clearly completely ignored by Adam Verner.

I read an interview with an audiobook narrator online and he said that his company had a research department that worked out all the pronounciations before a narrator began reading. Not so Oasis Audio. there was clearly not a second spent on researching pronounciations.

It is not just the Welsh words either. English words - especially place names - get the same treatment. The Wye valley becomes "wee", Leicester becomes "lie-chester", Warwick becomes "war-wick", Hereford becomes "hair-ford". Even simple words like "Briton" mangle the stress.

And then there is voice differentiation. Listening to the wonderful narrations of Stephen Fry or Tim Curry and others, you hear all kinds of wonderful accents and voice differentiation that make the books a pleasure to hear. Adam Verner's voices range from "shrill" to "scooby doo". I am not sure why so many American narrators feel that some characters should just sound stupid! The only variations in accent are those that sound like cowboys.

Adam Verner has a pleasant voice and reads well enough but he should not have attempted this work. Please please please do not buy this audio narration, it really spoils an otherwise enjoyable work.

This is an engrossing trilogy - full of moody, deep characters, plot twists, politics, and with a strong sense of setting. I think what I like best is the way Lawhead manages to incorprate the Robin Hood set pieces (the archery tournament, Will Scarlet's hanging etc) totally unexpectedly in a completely new way.

Scarlet picks up from where Hood leaves off (though it's a story in it's own right of course) and leaves us eagerly waiting for the third installment.

My advice: Buy Hood and this together, read them back to back.

Stephen R. Lawhead is an internationally acclaimed author of mythic history and imaginative fiction. His works include Byzantium and the series The Pendragon Cycle, The Celtic Crusades, and The Song of Albion. Lawhead makes his home in Austria with his wife. Stephen Lawhead is one of my all time favourite authors and I am only sorry that he does not write more often.

Stephen Lawhead has always been the master of a good historical story. His tales, whether they be his own original thoughts, like the Song of Albion series, or in the case of the Pendragon series a new look at an old story, are always full of life and adventure and he always manages to produce some of the best fantasy fiction around. This is the second book in the King Raven Trilogy and I am sure will not disappoint is legions of readers.

Once again Lawhead putsa new slant to an old story. No less a legend than that of Robin Hood. In the story, aptly named Hood our hapless hero, Bran, heir to the Welsh throne becomes an outlaw after his father is brutally murdered by the Normans.

The second book in the trilogy once again takes a new look at the tale of Robin Hood, but puts a completely new slant on the legend. Will Scarlet is prominent in this part of the story as it gets ever further and further away from the tale we all know as Robin Hood. I finally found it best to make a conscious effort to disregard the fact that the story is based, if only loosely on the old legend and treat the book simply on its own merits, as a well told and well written adventure story that takes place in the middle ages. Once you do that and are not using comparisons all the time, the story is much more enjoyable.