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Walk the Wild with Me
Publisher: DAW Books, Inc.

Walk the Wild with Me by Rachel Atwood is a fantasy story that seems to take place in a universe where characters from the tales of Robin Hood go hand in hand with those of Shakespeare and British/Scottish lore. It focuses on a young man named Nick who was saved when he was a toddler by a priest named Tuck, Friar Tuck, if you will. The child's parents had been murdered, along with his entire village, by wandering savages as a result of King John's Crusades and those seeking recompense. Tuck raises the youngster in the monastery, but when Masses are outlawed by the King, Tuck has to flee the country, or so everyone thinks. In reality, he is living with those who refuse to submit to the King's whims and is hiding out in the forest with the Woodwose and/or Wild Folk.

As a teenager, Tuck was chosen by Elena, the goddess of crossroads, cemeteries, and sorcery, and so he carried her silver cup with him at all times and she advised him. When Little John's love, Jane, was tricked by faeries and consigned to a life of slavery to Queen Mab in the Faery World, Tuck had the power, through Elena, to rescue her, but his fear got the better of him. Now decades later, Midsummer Night's Eve is once again approaching and with it, another chance to rescue Jane.

Nick is now a teenager living in the monastery he was raised in, but something in the woods pulls at him and he can't deny it. His best friend, Dom, has a twin sister named Hilde who was placed in the local nunnery when their father died, but Hilde's life there is far worse than Dom's. She is tortured daily by a particularly cruel nun, and Hilde is desperate for Dom to rescue her from this life. Fortunately, Dom has Nick on his side, and when Nick discovers Elena's silver cup deep below the monastery, everything changes. Elena begins whispering in his ear and he realizes many around him need his help. Will he be stronger than Tuck was all those years ago and be able to mount rescues for not only Hilde, but Jane as well?

This story has a number of characters that will ring a bell for many people, like Little John AKA The Green Man, and Robin Goodfellow AKA Puck AKA Robin of Locksley, Herne the Hunstman, Will Scarlett, and Queen Mab of the Faery World. Many have magical aspects to them, such as Little John who could turn into a tree at whim, or Robin Goodfellow, who would transform from the dashing Robin Hood character we know of lore, to a much smaller and stranger looking gnome-like man. Personally, throughout the book, I was never sure who exactly was Woodwose and who was considered Wild Folk, or whether the terms were used interchangeably, but clearly the folks living in the woods had magic all around them. I'm not an expert in Shakespeare, Robin Hood, or British lore, but I know enough to be workable. However, I did find myself confused by a number of the characters, since I was trying to figure out who was magic, who was Fae, who was somewhere in between, and who was just plain human. But maybe that's just me.

At any rate, Walk the Wild with Me is an entertaining yarn that I initially really enjoyed, but then found that it had too many tendrils to keep my focus. While the story did eventually wrap up and connect the characters, there were a number of loose ends concerning characters like Robin Goodfellow and his cursed lady love, but maybe those are planned for a later book. Either way, I'll probably pass on future installments because I prefer to let a book unfold easily as I read it, instead of feeling like I am being confused by the characters. Your mileage may vary.



-Psibabe, GameVortex Communications
AKA Ashley Perkins
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