Kill Shakespeare Volume 3: The Tide of Blood
What might have been merely a clever device has, over the course of three volumes, proven itself a grand opportunity to take advantage of literature’s greatest characters and richest stories. Leaving behind the new nation they forged after the defeat of Richard III, Juliet; her lover, Hamlet; and the heartsick Romeo are lured to Prospero’s island by an old enemy, who seeks, along with the seriously messed-up Prospero, to wrest ultimate control from the capricious god, William Shakespeare. There’s more action, wizardry, and gore than the Bard himself was apt to include, but clever echoes of dialogue, intense emotional turnabouts, and imaginatively theatrical art recall the plays in satisfying ways, while the sound and fury imbue it with more genre-friendly thrills. Grades 9-12. --Jesse Karp