{"id":9803,"date":"2023-08-11T22:24:24","date_gmt":"2023-08-12T02:24:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/?p=9803"},"modified":"2023-08-11T22:26:07","modified_gmt":"2023-08-12T02:26:07","slug":"book-review-shakespeare-unleashed-unleashed-2-edited-by-james-aquilone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/book-review-shakespeare-unleashed-unleashed-2-edited-by-james-aquilone\/","title":{"rendered":"Book Review: Shakespeare Unleashed (Unleashed, #2) edited by James Aquilone"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Shakespeare Unleashed (Unleashed, #2) <\/span><\/i>edited by James Aquilone<\/span><\/p>\n

Monstrous Books, 2023<\/span><\/p>\n

ISBN: 9781946346193<\/span><\/p>\n

Available: Hardcover, paperback, Kindle<\/span><\/p>\n

Buy:\u00a0 \u00a0Bookshop.org<\/a> \u00a0|\u00a0 Amazon.com<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

This is the second book in the <\/span>Unleashed<\/span><\/i> series, the first being <\/span>Classic Monsters Unleashed<\/span><\/i>, previokusly reviewed for this website.\u00a0 Like its predecessor, the stories are re-imaginings, continuations, or inspired by the Bard\u2019s work.\u00a0 How does it fare?\u00a0 Pretty well, the book starts slow but gets better throughout, with the real bangers finishing out the book with a flourish.\u00a0 If you haven\u2019t 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.\u00a0 Otherwise, a sizable portion of the stories might seem confusing.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The stories pull from a variety of Shakespeare\u2019s work, with none of them used as a subject more than three times.\u00a0 The usual suspects, like <\/span>Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet<\/span><\/i>, and <\/span>Hamlet<\/span><\/i> are represented, as well as lesser-known ones like <\/span>A Midsummer Night\u2019s Dream, The Merchant of Venice,<\/span><\/i> and <\/span>A Winter\u2019s Tale.<\/span><\/i>\u00a0 Some stories add a prequel or epilogue, or a separate story involving one of the characters.\u00a0 The best ones tend to be the \u2018inspired by\u2019 variety, where the basic concept is used in a different setting.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The first quarter of the book may be the weakest, and the hardest to follow, with the story \u2018All Hallowed Tides Break Upon These Shores,\u2019 a coda to <\/span>The Tempest<\/span><\/i>, being a bloody exception.\u00a0 The story quality becomes better and more consistent the rest of the way. \u00a0 Lavinia from <\/span>Titus Andronicus<\/span><\/i> 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.\u00a0 Standouts are the Macbethian “Case of the Bitter Witch”, the Romeo-esque “Timeless Tragedy,”, and the <\/span>King Lear<\/span><\/i> inspired “Fortune”: all are outstanding.\u00a0 They take the basic Shakespeare premise and run off in an entirely new direction, with excellent results.\u00a0 It\u2019s worth noting that with only an exception or two, the authors did NOT try to emulate the Bard\u2019s writing style, but wisely stuck with their own styles. \u00a0 The stories do get slick with blood at times, which is fitting, since Shakespeare\u2019s work could be violent at times.\u00a0 He just didn\u2019t write graphically, which is something modern authors can certainly do!<\/span><\/p>\n

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Bottom line?\u00a0 The book is a mixed bag, but there are enough good stories to justify the purchase.\u00a0 Just re-acquaint yourself with Sir William ahead of time before getting the book, then watch the curtain rise on some truly twisted tales.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Reviewed by Murray Samuelson<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Shakespeare Unleashed (Unleashed, #2) edited by James Aquilone Monstrous Books, 2023 ISBN: 9781946346193 Available: Hardcover, paperback, Kindle Buy:\u00a0 \u00a0Bookshop.org \u00a0|\u00a0 Amazon.com   This is the second book in the Unleashed series, the first being Classic Monsters Unleashed, previokusly reviewed for this website.\u00a0 Like its predecessor, the stories are re-imaginings, continuations, or inspired by the Bard\u2019s<\/p>\n

Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[750,645,749,5325,210,5418],"class_list":["post-9803","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-horror-anthologies","tag-horror-book-reviews","tag-horror-books","tag-james-aquilone","tag-shakespeare","tag-shakespeare-unleashed"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9803","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9803"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9803\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9807,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9803\/revisions\/9807"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9803"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9803"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9803"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}