What I'm Reading: Walk the Wild With Me by Rachel Atwood

This week marks the release of a deliciously tantalizing new fantasy read, Rachel Atwood's Walk the Wild With Me.

Here's a little bit about the book from Goodreads:

Orphaned when still a toddler, Nicholas Withybeck knows no other home than Locksley Abbey outside Nottingham, England. He works in the Scriptorium embellishing illuminated manuscripts with hidden faces of the Wild Folk and whimsical creatures that he sees every time he ventures into the woods and fields. His curiosity leads him into forbidden nooks and crannies inside, and outside the abbey. He becomes adept at hiding to stay out of trouble.

On one of these forays he slips into the crypt beneath the abbey. There he finds an altar older than the abbey's foundations, ancient when the Romans occupied England. Behind the bricks around the altar, he finds a palm-sized silver cup. The cup is embellished with the three figures of Elena, the Celtic goddess of crossroads, sorcery, and cemeteries.

He carries the cup with him always. The goddess whispers wisdom in the back of his mind. With Elena in his pocket, Nick can see that the masked dancers on the May Day celebration in the local village are the actual creatures of the wood, The Green Man, Robin Goodfellow, Herne the Huntsman, dryads, trolls, and water sprites, the imaginary faces he's seen and drawn into the Illuminations.

Over the course of several adventures where Elena guides Nick and keeps him safe, he learns that Little John's (the Green Man) love has been kidnapped by Queen Mab of the Faeries. The door to the Faery mound will only open when the moons of the two realms align. The time is fast approaching. Nick must release Elena so that she can use sorcery to unlock that door and Nick's band of friends can try to rescue the girl. Will he have the courage to release her as his predecessor did not?

Rachel Atwood is the pen name for Irene Radford, who I have not read before. This first as Atwood is a historical fantasy and is maybe a Robin Hood retelling...I've only just started so I'm not 100% sure about that just yet (with Little John and Robin Goodfellow as characters, it certainly seems that way). 

I've been looking forward to this one and so far am loving the atmosphere and the pacing. It's also making some of the top SFF lists for the end of the year!