There’s a disclaimer at the start of this book saying the people in this book…kind of push their luck, and it’s probably not for the best to try to end up like them. Then the rest of the book seems to be quite the argument for the opposite, making the off-the-grid criminal life look like paradise.
This isn’t a story where people are inspired by the legend of Robin Hood. Rather, there’s a twelve-year-old boy named Robin. Last name Hood. He lives with his father Ardagh Hood and older teenage brother John Hood. They’re a family living poor, like 90% of the town of Sherwood, where business used to be booming many years ago because of a massive car factory, but when it shut down with the jobs outsourced, it turned rundown. And it’s especially stayed that way because of Sheriff Marjorie, an iron-thumb ruler who keeps all the funds to the filthy rich and fraternizes with the local underworld boss, Guy Gisborne.
One day Robin has to run from his regular life of home and school, with nothing but his knapsack, bow, and arrows, and ends up finding a little community within the forest near Nottingham of off-the-grid dwellers and unkempt biker gangs, some adults, some children, and that’s all I’m willing to reveal about the plot because the story is too good to spoil.
Something that might surprise you is, a long time ago, I read four of Robert Muchamore’s internationally bestselling Cherub books…and really didn’t like them. They were about children who work for a spy agency to go undercover busting criminals and drug lords. So, Spy Kids-esque. Good concept. Except the spy agency teachers and bosses are complete assholes, almost all of the classmates are bullies, and oftentimes the criminals and drug lords are good people who don’t really deserve to be locked up. For those reasons, the books always put me in a bad mood. But I kept giving them chances because you could tell Muchamore has a talent for gripping writing. Every book always kept my interest before I gave up on the series.
Muchamore said he first became a writer because his nephew said books were for geeks and there was nothing cool to read, and even if I didn’t like the direction his Cherub series went, I have always respected Robert for it being his goal to change that. And now, almost ten years since I last read a book by him, I tried out the first in his new series, a modernization and retelling of the legendary steal-from-the-rich hero…and Muchamore knocked it out of the park. He has many other books in this series, and if he can keep the momentum going, I might be looking at a new favourite book collection. This is what I wanted Gone by Michael Grant to be.
We start the book off with Robin sneaking into the principal’s office to change some bad grades, so you can tell this is already going down the delinquent path. Robin is an immediately sympathetic character, not just because he’s also helping a close friend by changing his grades too, but also because we can tell he and his family don’t have much to their name and we want them out from the rubble. And then the book gets a lot more admirable when we learn how far the corruption looms in this broken town. Let me name some examples. Someone who has been accused of a crime can stay in prison for years and be drained tens of thousands of dollars just for a trial, thanks to the corrupted judicial process. Sheriff Marjorie has won four consecutive terms, not because she’s liked, but because she has Guy Gisborne’s thugs intimidate potential rivals and cheat in the elections. The town’s Gazette is biased in favour of Marjorie and Gisborne via the same method. Oh, and the police are also under their thumbs, of course. I always like when this kind of familiar corruption gets a whistle blown. These conflicts lead to a climax that brought a somewhat guilty smile to my face, almost like the characters I didn’t like in Cherub were finally getting comeuppance, almost like Cherub but the judicial roles reversed.
I also like the setup of these underworld people. Kind of like how the rats in Flushed Away used human tools that were either thrown out or they stole to make their little sewer city and gadgetry function, these outlaws have sneaky ways to operate outside the grid but still have shelters and food and electricity. They can access Netflix and they have a few hands in some pockets in the outside world. I guess they’re secure enough to let their guard down a little.
The one serious flaw I have with this book is its very short chapters. It has 52 of them and an epilogue at 248 pages. That’s less than 5 pages per chapter on average, and I generally enjoy books better when they don’t ask you “Would you like to stop?” so often. If Muchamore extended the chapters a bit, this would be a full five stars. It’s not the most fast-paced book at first, in spite of a fun opening. But what we have here is the first chapter, an establishing of an appealing and extreme community and a small-town civil war between the rich and the poor. There’s a lot of unresolved issues here, which is a big incentive. I need to know what happens next.
My grade: 4 and a half stars out of 5
William J. McGinn 
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