Yves  Donlon

Smile and Be a Villain

Thanks to NetGalley for an eARC in exchange for an honest review! I was super excited going into this book. In doing a lot of scholarly work with Shakespeare and retellings/adaptations/insert your preferred term here, I've come across a lot of books that retell the plays in unique and interesting ways. With this one, I felt a little bit underwhelmed unfortunately. Despite the fast pacing, the first 60ish% of the book dragged for me and I was honestly getting a bit bored. It felt like there were several scenes of dialogue missing (perhaps cut for space/time?) and were instead narrated through in a very tell-y way. This also contributed as to how some of the supporting characters didn't feel as fleshed out as they could have been (especially Rosencrantz and Guildenstern). Some of this could just be Donlon's writing style, and if it is, then maybe it simply just isn't for me. Once I hit the 65% mark, the narrative picked up for me though and that is what carried me through to the end of the book. There were also Shakespeare lines and allusions weaved in but some of these line drops changed the style of language being used and they just ended up feeling out of place (and, this is definitely very picky, I kind of hated how there was a line from The Tempest in here...). Ophelia and Hamlet were the stars of this though, and I'm glad they were given the space to exist both beside and outside of each other, especially Ophelia. The dual split between them worked extremely well and Ophelia's backstory getting fleshed out the way Donlon did was an awesome choice on their part. This prequel retelling definitely has a place in the genre of adaptation, and I'm glad it's being written because the way Donlon is mixing historical fantasy with Hamlet is really intriguing. I'm interested to see what they do in the next book and I'm definitely still going to give it a read to see what they do with the canonical events of Hamlet. So if queer magical Hamlet prequel is your jam, I recommend checking this one out when it comes out next month.

Smile and Be a Villain

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