Review: My first Selena Kitt "miss"...
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 02 15, 2012
Selena Kitt, <strong>A Twisted Bard's Tale</strong> (Excessica Publishing, 2008)I am a big-huge-monstrous fan of Selena Kitt's writing, and I've never made any secret of that in my reviews. Which makes it even more painful when I read something of hers and say "wow, I didn't like this much." Thankfully, it's only ever happened the once, and maybe it'll never happen again. This short reimagines the earlier days of <em>Romeo and Juliet</em> in a world where the grande (but ever so much younger than we see them usually depicted) dames of the Montague and Capulet families have been carrying on an illicit affair since their schoolgirl days. Nothing earth-shattering. Nothing even mildly unsafe, to be honest, and I think that may have been part of my problem with it, however minor a part it may have been. It took me a few days of mulling to put my finger on the problem I DID have with it, though. I finally came up with it last night: the archaic language used here, while certainly meant to provide part of the story's atmosphere, actually does the opposite. I should probably rush to add that I'm not sure anyone who didn't study Shakespeare in school may not even notice this (and by "study" I don't mean "have assigned in a random English class", I mean "take a class where you don't do anything but study Shakespeare"). Just in case I'm wrong, however, I'll caution you to start with other, set-in-the-modern-day, Kitt stories and get to this one once you're an already-established fan. **