I read this book because both my brother and a friend who understands my taste very well both recommended that I read it, and they both also declined to tell me much of anything about it going in. So I'm going to put the rest of this entry under a cut, in case you would like to also remain in the dark.
What's fascinating is that their reasons for not telling me anything were completely different--my friend recommended it in large part because it's a retelling of Hamlet told, more or less, from the point of view of the Horatio character, who is a trans dude.
I say 'more or less' because it's actually told in the second person from the point of view of a god, which sums up much of what my brother found so compelling about it. There are two separate stories happening, one the very immediate conflicts that comprise the plot of Hamlet, and the other the story of a god's birth and transformation and eventual captivity. I didn't know going in that it was a Hamlet retelling, and while I picked it up fairly quickly in the general sense, I was probably halfway through it before I appreciated exactly how faithful a tale it was. And then it changed, in part because of the presence of the god, but also because of what the setting did to the story and the desires, and by the end of it I found it a bit hard to breathe, because of how it came together. The rock god is such a readable voice, and the Horatio is so engaging, and I just want to live inside it and reread it again, to figure out how the author made it all work.
Grade: A
What's fascinating is that their reasons for not telling me anything were completely different--my friend recommended it in large part because it's a retelling of Hamlet told, more or less, from the point of view of the Horatio character, who is a trans dude.
I say 'more or less' because it's actually told in the second person from the point of view of a god, which sums up much of what my brother found so compelling about it. There are two separate stories happening, one the very immediate conflicts that comprise the plot of Hamlet, and the other the story of a god's birth and transformation and eventual captivity. I didn't know going in that it was a Hamlet retelling, and while I picked it up fairly quickly in the general sense, I was probably halfway through it before I appreciated exactly how faithful a tale it was. And then it changed, in part because of the presence of the god, but also because of what the setting did to the story and the desires, and by the end of it I found it a bit hard to breathe, because of how it came together. The rock god is such a readable voice, and the Horatio is so engaging, and I just want to live inside it and reread it again, to figure out how the author made it all work.
Grade: A
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