An inventive, accessible presentation of Hamlet with an SF twist.
Two alien AIs sneak their way through Shakespeare’s greatest play in Neill’s imaginative staging.
In the far distant future—long after humanity has died out and life has moved on to a different galaxy—the intelligences of an advanced machine-based civilization are still attempting to understand the works of William Shakespeare. The newly minted artificial consciousness J-9 (or Janine, as she prefers to be called) has been created to live within simulations of Shakespeare’s plays, observing the characters’ actions and thereby drawing inferences as to what ancient humans might have been like. With the help of her assistant, Otto—a mutating entity that most often takes the form of a robotic owl—Janine enters a production of Hamlet as a bit player, standing in as a guard, a servant girl, an attendant, or whoever else might slip into a scene unnoticed. From these—the best seats in the house—she and Otto watch the play unfolding in its entirety, with only the occasional asides that help explain some of the more opaque aspects of the language or plot. For example, when it’s revealed the new king Claudius has married his brother’s widow only two months after the dead king’s death, Janine “wrinkles her nose and purses her lips as if she has just bitten into a lemon. JANINE: That seems…hasty.” The reading experience is primarily that of reading Hamlet—there are extended sections where Janine and Otto fade into the background, leaving the reader alone with the text. Neill’s most helpful contributions come in the form of his setting and scene directions, including a highly evocative description of Elsinore castle: “It is no traditional four-walled bailey and keep, nor is it a bastion in the shape of a star to give archers or cannonades angles on attackers. Rather, the walls of Elsinore have followed the contours of the cliffs…giving it the appearance of a building with innumerable facades.” For fans of SF looking for a way into Shakespeare, Janine and Otto make for a fun and not overly intrusive set of guides.
An inventive, accessible presentation of Hamlet with an SF twist.Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9798282260809
Page Count: 264
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: July 7, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.
Atwood goes back to Gilead.
The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), consistently regarded as a masterpiece of 20th-century literature, has gained new attention in recent years with the success of the Hulu series as well as fresh appreciation from readers who feel like this story has new relevance in America’s current political climate. Atwood herself has spoken about how news headlines have made her dystopian fiction seem eerily plausible, and it’s not difficult to imagine her wanting to revisit Gilead as the TV show has sped past where her narrative ended. Like the novel that preceded it, this sequel is presented as found documents—first-person accounts of life inside a misogynistic theocracy from three informants. There is Agnes Jemima, a girl who rejects the marriage her family arranges for her but still has faith in God and Gilead. There’s Daisy, who learns on her 16th birthday that her whole life has been a lie. And there's Aunt Lydia, the woman responsible for turning women into Handmaids. This approach gives readers insight into different aspects of life inside and outside Gilead, but it also leads to a book that sometimes feels overstuffed. The Handmaid’s Tale combined exquisite lyricism with a powerful sense of urgency, as if a thoughtful, perceptive woman was racing against time to give witness to her experience. That narrator hinted at more than she said; Atwood seemed to trust readers to fill in the gaps. This dynamic created an atmosphere of intimacy. However curious we might be about Gilead and the resistance operating outside that country, what we learn here is that what Atwood left unsaid in the first novel generated more horror and outrage than explicit detail can. And the more we get to know Agnes, Daisy, and Aunt Lydia, the less convincing they become. It’s hard, of course, to compete with a beloved classic, so maybe the best way to read this new book is to forget about The Handmaid’s Tale and enjoy it as an artful feminist thriller.
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-385-54378-1
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Nan A. Talese
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Suspenseful, frightening, and sometimes poignant—provided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief.
A man walks out of a bar and his life becomes a kaleidoscope of altered states in this science-fiction thriller.
Crouch opens on a family in a warm, resonant domestic moment with three well-developed characters. At home in Chicago’s Logan Square, Jason Dessen dices an onion while his wife, Daniela, sips wine and chats on the phone. Their son, Charlie, an appealing 15-year-old, sketches on a pad. Still, an undertone of regret hovers over the couple, a preoccupation with roads not taken, a theme the book will literally explore, in multifarious ways. To start, both Jason and Daniela abandoned careers that might have soared, Jason as a physicist, Daniela as an artist. When Charlie was born, he suffered a major illness. Jason was forced to abandon promising research to teach undergraduates at a small college. Daniela turned from having gallery shows to teaching private art lessons to middle school students. On this bracing October evening, Jason visits a local bar to pay homage to Ryan Holder, a former college roommate who just received a major award for his work in neuroscience, an honor that rankles Jason, who, Ryan says, gave up on his career. Smarting from the comment, Jason suffers “a sucker punch” as he heads home that leaves him “standing on the precipice.” From behind Jason, a man with a “ghost white” face, “red, pursed lips," and "horrifying eyes” points a gun at Jason and forces him to drive an SUV, following preset navigational directions. At their destination, the abductor forces Jason to strip naked, beats him, then leads him into a vast, abandoned power plant. Here, Jason meets men and women who insist they want to help him. Attempting to escape, Jason opens a door that leads him into a series of dark, strange, yet eerily familiar encounters that sometimes strain credibility, especially in the tale's final moments.
Suspenseful, frightening, and sometimes poignant—provided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief.Pub Date: July 26, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-101-90422-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2016
PROFILES
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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