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Book Review: Shakespeare Unleashed (Unleashed, #2) edited by James Aquilone

Shakespeare Unleashed (Unleashed, #2) edited by James Aquilone

Monstrous Books, 2023

ISBN: 9781946346193

Available: Hardcover, paperback, Kindle

Buy:   Bookshop.org  |  Amazon.com

 

This is the second book in the Unleashed series, the first being Classic Monsters Unleashed, previokusly reviewed for this website.  Like its predecessor, the stories are re-imaginings, continuations, or inspired by the Bard’s work.  How does it fare?  Pretty well, the book starts slow but gets better throughout, with the real bangers finishing out the book with a flourish.  If you haven’t read Shakespeare since being force-fed it in high school, it really helps to at least read the Wikipedia entries for his most famous works before reading the book.  Otherwise, a sizable portion of the stories might seem confusing.

 

The stories pull from a variety of Shakespeare’s work, with none of them used as a subject more than three times.  The usual suspects, like Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet, and Hamlet are represented, as well as lesser-known ones like A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Merchant of Venice, and A Winter’s Tale.  Some stories add a prequel or epilogue, or a separate story involving one of the characters.  The best ones tend to be the ‘inspired by’ variety, where the basic concept is used in a different setting.

 

The first quarter of the book may be the weakest, and the hardest to follow, with the story ‘All Hallowed Tides Break Upon These Shores,’ a coda to The Tempest, being a bloody exception.  The story quality becomes better and more consistent the rest of the way.   Lavinia from Titus Andronicus features in a well-written tale of female revenge, “The Body, The Blood, The Woods, The Stage”, and the lecherous Sir John Falstaff gets a darkly comic dose of payback in “The Hungry Wives of Windsor”.The last quarter of the book is full of excitement and good writing.  Standouts are the Macbethian “Case of the Bitter Witch”, the Romeo-esque “Timeless Tragedy,”, and the King Lear inspired “Fortune”: all are outstanding.  They take the basic Shakespeare premise and run off in an entirely new direction, with excellent results.  It’s worth noting that with only an exception or two, the authors did NOT try to emulate the Bard’s writing style, but wisely stuck with their own styles.   The stories do get slick with blood at times, which is fitting, since Shakespeare’s work could be violent at times.  He just didn’t write graphically, which is something modern authors can certainly do!

 

Bottom line?  The book is a mixed bag, but there are enough good stories to justify the purchase.  Just re-acquaint yourself with Sir William ahead of time before getting the book, then watch the curtain rise on some truly twisted tales.

 

Reviewed by Murray Samuelson

 

Posted on August 11, 2023 by , Reply

Book Review: In the Lair of Legends by David Buzan

In The Lair of Legends by David Buzan

Black Rose Writing, 2023

ISBN: 978-1-68513-250-7 (Paperback), 978-1-68513-331-3 (Hardcover)

Available: Hardcover, paperback, Kindle edition

Buy:  Bookshop.org | Amazon.com

 

In The Lair of Legends by David Buzan is a well-written, exciting tale that combines action, myth and history.

 

Jolon Winterhawk is a Nez Perce warrior who was one of thousands of Native Americans who fought for the Union and Confederacy in the Civil War. Ten years later Lieutenant Winterhawk has one last assignment for the Union before returning to his wife and daughter. He is accompanying a large shipment of confiscated gold ore to an Army post in the Cascade Mountains of Oregon. The train carrying the ore is ambushed by a vengeful, renegade Mexican general. The raid sets off a chain of clashes between Winterhawk, the general, corrupt Union officers, lumberjacks and the Native people’s legendary Nu’numic (Ancient Ones, Sasquatch, Bigfoot).

 

The plot is fast-paced. Almost very chapter brings new, deadly clashes. The author describes the fights in stop-action detail and with abundant gore. However, the author presents the action with interesting and important pieces of history. The role of Native Americans in the Civil War, their plight after the War and the role of railroads in the West put the story in perspective. The author has done a lot of additional research. His detailed descriptions of weapons, ballooning and logging add verisimilitude to his novel.

 

Young adult and adult readers should enjoy the novel’s action and learning about history at the same time.

 

Highly recommended for young adults and adults

 

Contains: gore, mild profanity

 

Reviewed by Robert D. Yee

 

Posted on August 2, 2023 by , 1 comment

Book Review: Rabbits in the Garden (Gardening Guidebooks #1) by Jessica McHugh

Rabbits in the Garden (Gardening Guidebooks #1) by Jessica McHugh

Ghoulish Books, 2022

ISBN: 978-1943720736

Available: Paperback

Buy:  Bookshop.org | Amazon.com

 

After reading Jessica McHugh’s Rabbits in the Garden, readers will never look at rabbits or gardening tools in quite the same way again.

 

Avery’s mom has a creepy interest in her garden, as well as in keeping Avery and her sister on the straight and narrow when it comes to boys. She is a big believer in correcting people’s negative proclivities with her own brand of vigilante justice… as in, murdering them.

 

Unfortunately for Avery, her innocent friendship with Paul and her weird mother-assigned responsibility for the behavior of rabbits in the family garden lead her to discover the truth about her mother’s evil ways, and put her in danger of spending the rest of her life in a nightmarish insane asylum. Her fellow residents have some serious problems and believe that Avery is trying to hide hers. The staff employs brutal methods designed to punish rather than heal. 

 

Avery struggles throughout the book, fighting against the lies that have been told about her, defending herself against the horrible crimes she has been accused of by her own mother, and dealing with the survival friendships she makes with the mentally ill where she has been imprisoned. The odds of changing her situation seem impossible, and Avery suffers far more disappointments than successes along the way. 

 

Although the restrained language and minimal horrific and sexual detail might appropriately put this story of young love and family dynamics under the YA umbrella for some, an adult reading of Rabbits in the Garden as a coming-of-age horror novel also propels the book over the YA line to older readers who will appreciate McHugh’s excellent storytelling and dynamic style. Even after the worst acts in the book have already been committed, there are always still more to come. Even after the most intense human responses to betrayal, emotional/physical pain and loss occur, there are inevitably still more of those to come too, but in supernatural form. This leads to a fast and furious build up of tension, anxiety, and crushing fear that grow in the shadow of evil and finally explode in the last chapters. 

 

Is Avery a lesson in female empowerment in the fight against injustice or will she be an example of “like mother, like daughter”? This is the first book of The Gardening Guidebooks Trilogy, so we will find out.

 

Reviewed by Nova Hadley

 

Posted on June 28, 2023 by , Reply
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