“What can an eternity of damnation matter to someone who has felt, if only for a second, the infinity of delight?” ― Charles Baudelaire
What is Greenwode? Let me tell you, that’s likely the easiest of all the questions to answer among the many loose threads left unwoven into the tapestry of this series at the moment.
Greenwode is legend. It is epic storytelling. It is fantasy and history. It is religion and spirituality. It is a world in which faith is a weapon, faith is a tool, faith is the enemy, and faith is the last vestige of hope…when there seems nothing left to hope for. Greenwode is the beginning of a tale in which war is being waged, a battle between the new and the old religions, between Christianity and Paganism; there is Heaven, there is Hell, and the battlefield for the soul is being fought on Mother Earth.
Greenwode is a legend of the old magick on the brink of extinction in the land of disbelievers. Righteousness is waging war in the land of other-believers; the followers of the White Christ hold court and pass judgment on the practitioners of an ancient mythology. It is the place where the forest is the Paradise and outside that Eden is persecution. It is a place where the blind followers corrupt love, warping beauty into shame.
This novel is the blending of the legend of Robin Hood and The Tale of Gamelyn. It is a tale of love and honor, of duty and dogma, of fear and temptation. Of sacrifice. It is the story in which Rob of Loxley, a young man inextricably woven into the fabric of his beliefs, must decide whether Gamelyn is his rival or his lover, or if he is both rival and lover.
This is a story of forbidden love and unintentional betrayal in a place where dreams and visions are the foreshadowing of the reality that is to come. Can the future be altered once it is Seen, or is what has been foretold the only path to the inevitable end? Though, in this case, The End is only The Beginning.
If you love epic fantasy, I can’t recommend this book highly enough. J Tullos Hennig’s writing is nothing less than eloquent, her storytelling nothing less than stellar. This is the sort of book that makes me fall in love with words and language all over again. It’s a story that drew me in from page one and didn’t cut me loose, even when there were no more words left to read.
The book ends in a cliffhanger, one that promises no small amount of pain and heartache to come. This long and winding journey has only just got underway, where it will take me next I can only guess, but one thing I do know for sure is that I will be right there along with Rob, Gamelyn, and Marion every step of the way.
Reviewed by: Lisa
You can buy Greenwode (The Wode, Book 1) here: