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goodverbsonly's reviews
528 reviews
China Rich Girlfriend by Kevin Kwan
2.0
There really isn’t much to these books, and I know I would enjoy them more if I wasn’t listening to them on audio.
Frustrated by the absolute insistence on reading each footnote aloud and also Astrid. :(
Frustrated by the absolute insistence on reading each footnote aloud and also Astrid. :(
Dooku: Jedi Lost by Cavan Scott
3.0
also, is dooku his first name. his last name? a nickname? why does every character get a first and last name but dooku is just dooku ???????
audio is not a preferred format which makes it very difficult for me to fairly rate it, so a couple observations:
i. i think if it were traditionally published i wouldn’t have loved it...or maybe would have liked it a lot. the plot was Absurd but i had trouble following or caring about the framing device with ventress, except for the uh...anakin parallels
ii. the performances were all over the place. yoda and dooku obviously stand out as excellent, but qui-gon...oh my god. liam neeson’s accent is like...so subtle...the qui-gon performance was SO MUCH omg, as was ventress
iii. ky narec am i right ladies?
iv. lene kostana: nut job. crazy radical who took absolutely no responsibility for her role in things, who probably did a lot of long-term damage to the republic bc of her interactions with dooku AND sifo diyas
v. i’m just like. this huge yoda fan. i had a revelation about him like a year ago, and i’m ecstatic we’re all drinking the pro-yoda koolaid bc he’s so wacky and ineffable but he’s also...amazing
vi. across the stars as a major theme playing!! this book could have been GARBAGE and i would give it 3 stars for using that music so skillfully throughout
vii. there seems to be contradictory canon going on...things that don’t seem to track with established Canon (lf approved canon from 2014 onwards i know the drill) especially with the way the council works??? who can take a padawan, etc. etc. if this muddies the water, i’m hoping master and apprentice will clear it up
in all honesty i don’t really know what to think bc i had a really hard time following it...a weakness, a personal issue...i guess we’ll never know
audio is not a preferred format which makes it very difficult for me to fairly rate it, so a couple observations:
i. i think if it were traditionally published i wouldn’t have loved it...or maybe would have liked it a lot. the plot was Absurd but i had trouble following or caring about the framing device with ventress, except for the uh...anakin parallels
ii. the performances were all over the place. yoda and dooku obviously stand out as excellent, but qui-gon...oh my god. liam neeson’s accent is like...so subtle...the qui-gon performance was SO MUCH omg, as was ventress
iii. ky narec am i right ladies?
iv. lene kostana: nut job. crazy radical who took absolutely no responsibility for her role in things, who probably did a lot of long-term damage to the republic bc of her interactions with dooku AND sifo diyas
v. i’m just like. this huge yoda fan. i had a revelation about him like a year ago, and i’m ecstatic we’re all drinking the pro-yoda koolaid bc he’s so wacky and ineffable but he’s also...amazing
vi. across the stars as a major theme playing!! this book could have been GARBAGE and i would give it 3 stars for using that music so skillfully throughout
vii. there seems to be contradictory canon going on...things that don’t seem to track with established Canon (lf approved canon from 2014 onwards i know the drill) especially with the way the council works??? who can take a padawan, etc. etc. if this muddies the water, i’m hoping master and apprentice will clear it up
in all honesty i don’t really know what to think bc i had a really hard time following it...a weakness, a personal issue...i guess we’ll never know
The Magician's Nephew by C.S. Lewis
5.0
if i could: i recently reread the magicians nephew on my way home from scranton and it’s!!! delightful!!! i’ve pretty much exhausted my ability to do a full review of narnia, and i’m on mobile anyway about two
months after last read it but:
1. it is so much funnier than i remember it being. i haven’t sat down to read lewis since high school until this year, and he is so clearly so much smarter than me. it comes through in his humor. i found myself laughing out loud in my car on the way home from school.
2. polly and digory are equally balanced characters with a lot of wonderful personality traits. i think one of my favorite things about narnia is how our heroes think and act like children, and they also aren’t always good. digory has a kind of mean streak to him, not just when he’s under the influence of magic. polly is definitely. huffy in the way only adolescent girls can be.
months after last read it but:
1. it is so much funnier than i remember it being. i haven’t sat down to read lewis since high school until this year, and he is so clearly so much smarter than me. it comes through in his humor. i found myself laughing out loud in my car on the way home from school.
2. polly and digory are equally balanced characters with a lot of wonderful personality traits. i think one of my favorite things about narnia is how our heroes think and act like children, and they also aren’t always good. digory has a kind of mean streak to him, not just when he’s under the influence of magic. polly is definitely. huffy in the way only adolescent girls can be.
The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis
4.0
I have a complicated relationship with my belief in something like demons or angels (as i do with my faith in God) - but the post script at the back by C.S. Lewis reminds us that his belief in real devils does not mean that our belief is a...given. You can read this book as allegory, but there does seem to be something missing from it.
It was funnier than the first time I read it (since I read it a 14 and much of it went over my head), but parts of it were deeply sad. In the end, the “patient’s” escape from Hell is the only move available. What kind of satire would Lewis have written if he let a man, with few moral failings, fall into the clutches of an incompetent tempter? At every moment, we have a chance to do better. At points, it is clear that the patient is Lewis, who has the same weaknesses and a similar disposition. There is at least one joke that is at his own expense. It is startling to see how little the world has changed in the last 40-70 years. In spite of all the philosophers i’ve read in the last 2 years, and in spite of our technological advancements, the post war world is hardly different at all - at least by Lewis’s view. It does make me wish for him now, to help guide me, personally, through the 21st century.
The Screwtape Letters remains a pointed reminder to watch your habits and thoughts. Even the well-intentioned lead you away from God.
His attitude about school is As Per Usual Upsetting, Probably Wrong or Shortsighted, but also, I am very familiar with his biography so it’s not with commenting on besides that.
It was funnier than the first time I read it (since I read it a 14 and much of it went over my head), but parts of it were deeply sad. In the end, the “patient’s” escape from Hell is the only move available. What kind of satire would Lewis have written if he let a man, with few moral failings, fall into the clutches of an incompetent tempter? At every moment, we have a chance to do better. At points, it is clear that the patient is Lewis, who has the same weaknesses and a similar disposition. There is at least one joke that is at his own expense. It is startling to see how little the world has changed in the last 40-70 years. In spite of all the philosophers i’ve read in the last 2 years, and in spite of our technological advancements, the post war world is hardly different at all - at least by Lewis’s view. It does make me wish for him now, to help guide me, personally, through the 21st century.
The Screwtape Letters remains a pointed reminder to watch your habits and thoughts. Even the well-intentioned lead you away from God.
His attitude about school is As Per Usual Upsetting, Probably Wrong or Shortsighted, but also, I am very familiar with his biography so it’s not with commenting on besides that.
Bloodline by Claudia Gray
3.0
Writing: a little clunky at times, and some of the character voices didn't match up (established characters, namely Leia felt off to me, pretty often.) Other established characters (actually, just Han, I think he's the only other one) were Spot On. OC's (lol) were delightful and also really playing into the star wars trope characters. Early Luke/Ezra in Joph Seastriker (oh, Joph Seastriker. young, stupid brave pilot, excitable, is a character in a star wars story? that is shocking! he's so out of place!).
Pretty average story over all, which is, I suppose, a challenge writing a Star Wars story: Bloodline is the Origin Story of the Resistance. Also, perhaps it's my disillusionment with the Overall Tone and Message of the ST but, I just have a problem with an underlying assumption this book makes: the political pettiness and discord of our current time is born out of malice, which I don't think is true, I think is ultimately harmful to think, and also, REFUSE to believe.
Secondly, Leia's political opinions are wrong. That's not...thinking that individual worlds deserve more control (hate to be controversial, but that's very Republican of her - very little l liberal of her - not that galactic politics are a direct analogy to the politics to the united states; in each political faction there's a right and a left and i SHUDDER to think of what the populist left is: oh no, i figured it out, it's communism. wait, actually, what i'm about to say makes a lot of sense). She's so against central power, she doesn't realize until the government has literally collapsed around her that there's no world in which they can gather THOUSANDS OF SYSTEMS (which is...a system of planets. If there's a 1-1 senator per planet, that's NOT a 1-1 senator to SYSTEM, or else, a senator representing the interests not only of their own planet (including multiple races, i.e. Representative Binks representing the gungans, or at least that's how i understand it), but representing the interests of potentially a dozen planets in their system (i'm thinking mandalore specifically, which was. as far as i can tell: a independent (neutral) system during tcw, then a part of the empire because of MAUL, and so what??? is a part of the New Republic, but either way a Bunch of Planets)) without some kind of central authority. Leia - who was like 24 when they started forming this government and was a) terrified of the Empire and Herself and b) an idealist and in her 20's - believed that less /central/ government was possible which led to the corruption of the senate (again, wow hi Nietzsche), and also worlds bein' mad as hell about their interests being neglected in the quagmire of the Galactic Senate. But like. obviously, 24 yo leia organa 2x war-orphaned, wasn't the only person in charge of the formation of their constitution, and so someone, maybe someone with political experience should have been like: oh, our idealist system of government is going to COLLAPSE without ?? a chancellor? is that what they had at the start of the book?? it's frustrating, because in spite of Leia seeing this aspect, she still doesn't...allow herself to sympathize with The Centrists At Large and the book paints them All as Complicit in corruption, which is an unhelpful narrative imo, and also, literally insane in a party of what I assume to be made up of THOUSANDS of planets.
On the other hand, I fully cried when Leia was outed as Darth Vader's daughter, and she didn't know how to tell Ben, which. like. we know how that turns out. Very tender reflections on our fave dad Bail Organa made me really miss Alderaan.
Pretty average story over all, which is, I suppose, a challenge writing a Star Wars story: Bloodline is the Origin Story of the Resistance. Also, perhaps it's my disillusionment with the Overall Tone and Message of the ST but, I just have a problem with an underlying assumption this book makes: the political pettiness and discord of our current time is born out of malice, which I don't think is true, I think is ultimately harmful to think, and also, REFUSE to believe.
Secondly, Leia's political opinions are wrong. That's not...thinking that individual worlds deserve more control (hate to be controversial, but that's very Republican of her - very little l liberal of her - not that galactic politics are a direct analogy to the politics to the united states; in each political faction there's a right and a left and i SHUDDER to think of what the populist left is: oh no, i figured it out, it's communism. wait, actually, what i'm about to say makes a lot of sense). She's so against central power, she doesn't realize until the government has literally collapsed around her that there's no world in which they can gather THOUSANDS OF SYSTEMS (which is...a system of planets. If there's a 1-1 senator per planet, that's NOT a 1-1 senator to SYSTEM, or else, a senator representing the interests not only of their own planet (including multiple races, i.e. Representative Binks representing the gungans, or at least that's how i understand it), but representing the interests of potentially a dozen planets in their system (i'm thinking mandalore specifically, which was. as far as i can tell: a independent (neutral) system during tcw, then a part of the empire because of MAUL, and so what??? is a part of the New Republic, but either way a Bunch of Planets)) without some kind of central authority. Leia - who was like 24 when they started forming this government and was a) terrified of the Empire and Herself and b) an idealist and in her 20's - believed that less /central/ government was possible which led to the corruption of the senate (again, wow hi Nietzsche), and also worlds bein' mad as hell about their interests being neglected in the quagmire of the Galactic Senate. But like. obviously, 24 yo leia organa 2x war-orphaned, wasn't the only person in charge of the formation of their constitution, and so someone, maybe someone with political experience should have been like: oh, our idealist system of government is going to COLLAPSE without ?? a chancellor? is that what they had at the start of the book?? it's frustrating, because in spite of Leia seeing this aspect, she still doesn't...allow herself to sympathize with The Centrists At Large and the book paints them All as Complicit in corruption, which is an unhelpful narrative imo, and also, literally insane in a party of what I assume to be made up of THOUSANDS of planets.
On the other hand, I fully cried when Leia was outed as Darth Vader's daughter, and she didn't know how to tell Ben, which. like. we know how that turns out. Very tender reflections on our fave dad Bail Organa made me really miss Alderaan.
Hamlet, Prince of Denmark by David Hewson, A.J. Hartley
4.0
Hi, I'm Anna and I have basically been thinking about Hamlet non-stop since I've been 17, and also, incidentally, have been working on, for the last year, my own Hamlet retelling, because, as Hartley mentions in his afterword, you'd think I would have said everything there is to say about Hamlet at this point, but alas, I will not shut up. I am, of course, paraphrasing.
The first thing is that this is, all things considered, a fairly faithful retelling of Hamlet. When Fortinbras enters the scene to look at what's happened, and if Horatio is the only one around to tell the events, it wouldn't look any different than the play, but because of a few important changes Claudius is the tragic hero, and Hamlet a mere victim, which is interesting, but really does a lot to lessen the role and responsibility Hamlet has in the events of the play. It is Claudius, who murders his brother with good intentions who is solely responsible for the destruction at the end of the play. Hamlet is his bereaved and misguided nephew he loves, who he never wanted to kill, who dies as a final consequence of Claudius' love for Gertrude. Blood beckons blood as it were, and Claudius cannot escape the consequences of this not because he is the villain but because he is the tragic hero. Of course, then the title of this novel is misleading - this book is hardly about Hamlet at all, except that he's one sad, 27 year old BABY who gets dragged into this mess because of some misplaced duty he has to a father and king who never loved him, or potentially anyone. Hamlet doesn't kill Claudius, um, at all, I think. Claudius boldly, nobly accepts his death as the only outcome, having seen the destruction he has caused. In what is the end of the third act Hamlet doesn't kill Claudius because of the love he has for his uncle who was more of a father to him than Old Hamlet ever was. I think the premise has promise and it was executed well enough to see Claudius - the villain - cast in the new light of Tragic Hero. It leaves a lot of room of the authors to reinterpret the rest of the story and characters, but it does leave Hamlet in an awkward space, imo.
I have some General Misgivings about the characterization of Old Hamlet as a Bad Guy that have a lot to do with how Hamlet is insistent on mourning his father, and me accepting Hamlet as the ultimate unreliable narrator. I have significantly fewer General Misgivings bout the characterization of Claudius as a nuanced character because he is a living character in the play and his love for Gertrude seems real and genuine. This Claudius was noble, cautious, loving, and being manipulated by the villains in the play: Polonius and Voltimand.
The choice to play Polonius as a villain makes sense. While I usually prefer readings of him as a genuine if bumbling and ambitious fool who falls victim to Hamlet because he is incapable of like, minding his own business, I also believe the characters is more cunning than a lot of the rest of court (and my classmates in 11th grade) were willing to believe. It is he who really schemes to kill Old Hamlet, and it is he who suggests Claudius send Hamlet to his death. This is okay and could be...cool, even...if not for his callousness, and that he gets very little out of this arrangement. The OTHER choice of villain, Voltimand, who has been scheming for much longer to take Polonius' place and to, I don't know, cause general unrest in Denmark, is INSANE. It's one of three choices this novel made that I am still trying to grapple with because I cannot even imagine how they GOT here. Voltimand, oh you remember him from 1.2? He's the ambassador who went to Norway to tell Fortinbras' uncle that Fortinbras was causing a scene. Yeah, he's a major villain who gets his comeuppance in the fourth act in this novel. He is more than treacherous and scheming - he is violent, assaulting and eventually murdering Ophelia.
I've thought Long and Hard about Ophelia over the last few days (months, years, whatever) because she presents me with a Problem - the problem, of course, is the desire to rewrite her story in a way that is palatable, a way the returns her the agency that other characters in the play strip from her. This novel does a good job stripping her of agency - and having it be calculated and on purpose in the case of her father, out of concern from her brother, and out of spite and to get back at Polonius from Hamlet. It also strips her of the little agency she is able to exercise in the play. Ophelia's suicide is important to me, as is her madness. She is relegated to simply a victim when her only choice in the play, the only time she speaks what she thinks, is too stripped away. She is murdered, buried with the common people because Voltimand says she killed herself and was written off as crazy. Oh sure, Hamlet knows, but at what cost? Ophelia's madness and suicide is important, and I think people don't want her to ever get there, they think it would be better, that she would be a Stronger Female Character if she was more than her madness, but the reality of Ophelia's situation is that her madness and her grief is deserved, and having her be assaulted and murdered then slandered after her death, in an effort to make her Less Crazy or to expose the violence that is enacted on her makes the whole thing a lot worse. I genuinely hate! that this novel took the only choice she makes, her only act of agency, and turns it into violence. It's also a choice I understand.
Okay, so Yorick? The explanation for Yorick is that they didn't want Hamlet to be doing soliloquies (fair - especially because this is a Thriller and not the Existential Nightmare that is typically what we think of his Hamlet. In theory, I'm getting there, but SPOILER, I don't think this is a fair assessment of Hamlet the play) and so instead gave them back to him in dialogue, and that to do Hamlet without Hamlet talking to Yorick would do a disservice to literature or something. It's an interesting concept. Yorick was executed after learning of Claudius and Gertrude's affair by Old King Hamlet. He told Polonius, who told both Old Hamlet and Claudius and so is the indirect cause of the madness of the play that follows. He is immortalized not in a skull (though ALSO in a skull) but in the humiliating statues and paintings of him Old Hamlet puts up of him after his death, and is Hamlet's mind. While the ghost of the king might be real, the ghost of Yorick is less certain. Hamlet is the only character to interact with Yorick, and Yorick disappears once Hamlet starts to interact with the play at large. Also, he's the only character who has any meta-knowledge of the play Hamlet, so I became aware that Yorick (pretending he is Young Yorick) was at the very least a ghost long before Hamlet did. He functions in much the same way as the soliloquies do, asking Hamlet to same questions about life and death and justice, and as Hamlet really is just talking to himself, it's fine. But also, he replaces Horatio. At first I thought I was imagining it, since in my own work I have given Horatio a more major role, but there are several scenes in which Yorick replaces Horatio. Sure Horatio disappears for all of the second and much of the third act but he is important as a grounding character to Hamlet and to others. He is relegated in this work to the role he has in many adaptations (except for one I watched over the summer where he was very earnest and very ridiculous, but the whole adaptation was such a hot mess it like, honestly barely counts): Hamlet's second. If you need a sounding board for Hamlet's soliloquies Horatio is right there, and while Yorick is, in this adaptation, a perfect person to reflect on who is Uncle and who is Father are, because Yorick was a victim of all of this, I think Horatio could have been brought to center stage and we could have lost Chaos-Demon-Yorick altogether. Also, the idea that he acts as Hamlet's foil is, at this point, laughable. Not that he doesn't act as Hamlet's foil, but that if there was ever a character in the history of literature who did not benefit from having a foil it was Hamlet. He has a foil, okay! Every where you look in Hamlet there's a character who can act as Hamlet's foil. There is no reason to create a new character to serve this purpose.
Lastly, in their afterword, AJ Hartley talks about Hamlet as thriller: this novel cements Hamlet from the play as the Least Reliable Narrator, imo, because the political conflict that is happening outside the walls of Elsinore is completely made into a non-issue until the final scene. But with the majority of this novel taking place from Claudius' point of view, Fortinbras' nonsense is front and center and drives much of the plot. Hamlet's madness is a destabilizing force, and Voltimand and Polonius both are seemingly working against Denmark. The King, in the last act, desperate to save his family but not a warrior like his brother, makes a deal with Fortinbras to take Denmark if he will let him and Gertrude escape and leaves the civilians alone. Hamlet is a prophesied "Danish Arthur" who is meant to save Denmark, born on the very day that Old Fortinbras was slain, but Hamlet, alas, is Hamlet and is woefully unsuccessful and not even a major player in the events that transpire. Also, I resent that Hamlet, as it is, is not a thriller, not plot driven. The first two acts are about Hamlet waiting and biding his time and feeling sorry for himself, but the second half of the play, starting from the mousetrap scene and until the very end, are definitely Thrilling; they're driving. Hamlet, mostly, is about Hamlet desperately trying to have the events of Hamlet not happen, and you know he's aware of it because he writes his own play. We never seen the end of the mousetrap, but how do we think it ends? Good because Hamlet's deluded himself? Unlikely! But once Hamlet puts his plan in motion, there is no stopping any of it. (Incidentally, the grave yard scene is important because it is a break! from the chaos.)
Anyway, this is good, it obviously is well-informed, and very entertaining. There were some choices I never would have made in a million years, but apart from the choices about Ophelia and Horatio, none of them were bad. It's also both too reliant on the text of Hamlet and disregards it at strange times. Four Stars!
The first thing is that this is, all things considered, a fairly faithful retelling of Hamlet. When Fortinbras enters the scene to look at what's happened, and if Horatio is the only one around to tell the events, it wouldn't look any different than the play, but because of a few important changes Claudius is the tragic hero, and Hamlet a mere victim, which is interesting, but really does a lot to lessen the role and responsibility Hamlet has in the events of the play. It is Claudius, who murders his brother with good intentions who is solely responsible for the destruction at the end of the play. Hamlet is his bereaved and misguided nephew he loves, who he never wanted to kill, who dies as a final consequence of Claudius' love for Gertrude. Blood beckons blood as it were, and Claudius cannot escape the consequences of this not because he is the villain but because he is the tragic hero. Of course, then the title of this novel is misleading - this book is hardly about Hamlet at all, except that he's one sad, 27 year old BABY who gets dragged into this mess because of some misplaced duty he has to a father and king who never loved him, or potentially anyone. Hamlet doesn't kill Claudius, um, at all, I think. Claudius boldly, nobly accepts his death as the only outcome, having seen the destruction he has caused. In what is the end of the third act Hamlet doesn't kill Claudius because of the love he has for his uncle who was more of a father to him than Old Hamlet ever was. I think the premise has promise and it was executed well enough to see Claudius - the villain - cast in the new light of Tragic Hero. It leaves a lot of room of the authors to reinterpret the rest of the story and characters, but it does leave Hamlet in an awkward space, imo.
I have some General Misgivings about the characterization of Old Hamlet as a Bad Guy that have a lot to do with how Hamlet is insistent on mourning his father, and me accepting Hamlet as the ultimate unreliable narrator. I have significantly fewer General Misgivings bout the characterization of Claudius as a nuanced character because he is a living character in the play and his love for Gertrude seems real and genuine. This Claudius was noble, cautious, loving, and being manipulated by the villains in the play: Polonius and Voltimand.
The choice to play Polonius as a villain makes sense. While I usually prefer readings of him as a genuine if bumbling and ambitious fool who falls victim to Hamlet because he is incapable of like, minding his own business, I also believe the characters is more cunning than a lot of the rest of court (and my classmates in 11th grade) were willing to believe. It is he who really schemes to kill Old Hamlet, and it is he who suggests Claudius send Hamlet to his death. This is okay and could be...cool, even...if not for his callousness, and that he gets very little out of this arrangement. The OTHER choice of villain, Voltimand, who has been scheming for much longer to take Polonius' place and to, I don't know, cause general unrest in Denmark, is INSANE. It's one of three choices this novel made that I am still trying to grapple with because I cannot even imagine how they GOT here. Voltimand, oh you remember him from 1.2? He's the ambassador who went to Norway to tell Fortinbras' uncle that Fortinbras was causing a scene. Yeah, he's a major villain who gets his comeuppance in the fourth act in this novel. He is more than treacherous and scheming - he is violent, assaulting and eventually murdering Ophelia.
I've thought Long and Hard about Ophelia over the last few days (months, years, whatever) because she presents me with a Problem - the problem, of course, is the desire to rewrite her story in a way that is palatable, a way the returns her the agency that other characters in the play strip from her. This novel does a good job stripping her of agency - and having it be calculated and on purpose in the case of her father, out of concern from her brother, and out of spite and to get back at Polonius from Hamlet. It also strips her of the little agency she is able to exercise in the play. Ophelia's suicide is important to me, as is her madness. She is relegated to simply a victim when her only choice in the play, the only time she speaks what she thinks, is too stripped away. She is murdered, buried with the common people because Voltimand says she killed herself and was written off as crazy. Oh sure, Hamlet knows, but at what cost? Ophelia's madness and suicide is important, and I think people don't want her to ever get there, they think it would be better, that she would be a Stronger Female Character if she was more than her madness, but the reality of Ophelia's situation is that her madness and her grief is deserved, and having her be assaulted and murdered then slandered after her death, in an effort to make her Less Crazy or to expose the violence that is enacted on her makes the whole thing a lot worse. I genuinely hate! that this novel took the only choice she makes, her only act of agency, and turns it into violence. It's also a choice I understand.
Okay, so Yorick? The explanation for Yorick is that they didn't want Hamlet to be doing soliloquies (fair - especially because this is a Thriller and not the Existential Nightmare that is typically what we think of his Hamlet. In theory, I'm getting there, but SPOILER, I don't think this is a fair assessment of Hamlet the play) and so instead gave them back to him in dialogue, and that to do Hamlet without Hamlet talking to Yorick would do a disservice to literature or something. It's an interesting concept. Yorick was executed after learning of Claudius and Gertrude's affair by Old King Hamlet. He told Polonius, who told both Old Hamlet and Claudius and so is the indirect cause of the madness of the play that follows. He is immortalized not in a skull (though ALSO in a skull) but in the humiliating statues and paintings of him Old Hamlet puts up of him after his death, and is Hamlet's mind. While the ghost of the king might be real, the ghost of Yorick is less certain. Hamlet is the only character to interact with Yorick, and Yorick disappears once Hamlet starts to interact with the play at large. Also, he's the only character who has any meta-knowledge of the play Hamlet, so I became aware that Yorick (pretending he is Young Yorick) was at the very least a ghost long before Hamlet did. He functions in much the same way as the soliloquies do, asking Hamlet to same questions about life and death and justice, and as Hamlet really is just talking to himself, it's fine. But also, he replaces Horatio. At first I thought I was imagining it, since in my own work I have given Horatio a more major role, but there are several scenes in which Yorick replaces Horatio. Sure Horatio disappears for all of the second and much of the third act but he is important as a grounding character to Hamlet and to others. He is relegated in this work to the role he has in many adaptations (except for one I watched over the summer where he was very earnest and very ridiculous, but the whole adaptation was such a hot mess it like, honestly barely counts): Hamlet's second. If you need a sounding board for Hamlet's soliloquies Horatio is right there, and while Yorick is, in this adaptation, a perfect person to reflect on who is Uncle and who is Father are, because Yorick was a victim of all of this, I think Horatio could have been brought to center stage and we could have lost Chaos-Demon-Yorick altogether. Also, the idea that he acts as Hamlet's foil is, at this point, laughable. Not that he doesn't act as Hamlet's foil, but that if there was ever a character in the history of literature who did not benefit from having a foil it was Hamlet. He has a foil, okay! Every where you look in Hamlet there's a character who can act as Hamlet's foil. There is no reason to create a new character to serve this purpose.
Lastly, in their afterword, AJ Hartley talks about Hamlet as thriller: this novel cements Hamlet from the play as the Least Reliable Narrator, imo, because the political conflict that is happening outside the walls of Elsinore is completely made into a non-issue until the final scene. But with the majority of this novel taking place from Claudius' point of view, Fortinbras' nonsense is front and center and drives much of the plot. Hamlet's madness is a destabilizing force, and Voltimand and Polonius both are seemingly working against Denmark. The King, in the last act, desperate to save his family but not a warrior like his brother, makes a deal with Fortinbras to take Denmark if he will let him and Gertrude escape and leaves the civilians alone. Hamlet is a prophesied "Danish Arthur" who is meant to save Denmark, born on the very day that Old Fortinbras was slain, but Hamlet, alas, is Hamlet and is woefully unsuccessful and not even a major player in the events that transpire. Also, I resent that Hamlet, as it is, is not a thriller, not plot driven. The first two acts are about Hamlet waiting and biding his time and feeling sorry for himself, but the second half of the play, starting from the mousetrap scene and until the very end, are definitely Thrilling; they're driving. Hamlet, mostly, is about Hamlet desperately trying to have the events of Hamlet not happen, and you know he's aware of it because he writes his own play. We never seen the end of the mousetrap, but how do we think it ends? Good because Hamlet's deluded himself? Unlikely! But once Hamlet puts his plan in motion, there is no stopping any of it. (Incidentally, the grave yard scene is important because it is a break! from the chaos.)
Anyway, this is good, it obviously is well-informed, and very entertaining. There were some choices I never would have made in a million years, but apart from the choices about Ophelia and Horatio, none of them were bad. It's also both too reliant on the text of Hamlet and disregards it at strange times. Four Stars!
Alliances by Timothy Zahn
3.0
if darth vader doesn’t use the name his mother gave him i will LOSE my mind. 3.5 ⭐️
Star Wars: Labyrinth of Evil by James Luceno
4.0
Um, infinite sadness is right! Every moment of this book is so over the top and DARING me to laugh in the middle of a scene of terrifying foreshadowing of Anakin's imminent (two week away) fall. What else can be said, except that James Luceno doesn't linger enough in moments that I want him to spend some time in (lots of insane dialogue that I love out of the two most ridiculous Jedi who ever lived, lots of baring their feelings and being open-ish with each other, and lots of Obi-Wan just kind of ignoring that Anakin is now just one GIANT redflag, amazing).
Frankly, the fact that Anakin nearly crushes Dooku to death with his Rage and then not 48 hours later shows up on Greivous' flagship and says: My power has doubled since the last time we met (still, obviously referencing the duel in aotc, and Luceno did a nice job not having them meet face to face to not directly contradict this but STILL) is so ridiculous.
Frankly, the fact that Anakin nearly crushes Dooku to death with his Rage and then not 48 hours later shows up on Greivous' flagship and says: My power has doubled since the last time we met (still, obviously referencing the duel in aotc, and Luceno did a nice job not having them meet face to face to not directly contradict this but STILL) is so ridiculous.