In most books, Magic always follows rules. You can only get into Narnia under certain circumstances, with Aslan’s permission. In Half Magic by Edward Eager, you always get exactly half of what you wish for. The One Ring (Tolkien) works in a specific way to do specific things and can only be destroyed in one, very specific place. Harry Potter has to go to school to learn the rules of Magic in his world.

In Robbie Forester and the Outlaws of Sherwood St., Magic shows up, but it’s an unpredictable, capricious sort of Magic that only seems to have rules. The children involved in this magical adventure never do figure out the rules of when the “magic power” will appear, much less how to control it. It seems to have something to do with injustice: Robbie and her friends, Ashanti, Silas, and Tutu, receive magical help and powers whenever there is injustice to be righted. But, as Robbie notices, the world is full of injustice, and the magic only shows up sometimes, following its own rules that are unfathomable both to the reader and to Robbie and her merry band of outlaws.

Robbie Forrester and the Outlaws of Sherwood St. tells the tale of a group of four young teens who become friends in spite of their differing backgrounds and talents and join together to “rob the rich and give to the poor.” The villains in the piece are greedy capitalist land developer, Sheldon Gunn, his fixer/lawyer, Egil Borg, and a nasty little arsonist named Harry Henkel. The rob-the-rich and capitalists-are-evil subtext bothered me a little bit, but the story was well-paced and fun. Sheldon Gunn really is an evil capitalist who goes so far as to try to put a soup kitchen out of business (isn’t it always a soup kitchen or a homeless shelter?), and the kids are purely good, never even thinking about keeping some of the money they “steal” for themselves. There’s not a lot of nuance here, just old-fashioned good vs. evil with some temperamental magical help along the way.

There are questions raised in the book, about Ashanti’s family, about Tutu’s future, about the possible reappearance of the magical powers, that are not resolved. It looks as if we’re being set up for a sequel, or maybe this book just doesn’t follow the rules for a magical fantasy.