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3.54 AVERAGE
3.54 AVERAGE
dark
mysterious
medium-paced
Beautifully written and a great Hamlet retelling. Can get a little prose heavy at times which can make it hard to get through at times but i like that in a story sometimes.
Hayden Lichfield stumbles upon his father’s dead body in his lab. Hayden knows that the killer was after the Sisyphus Formula that he and his father were working on. His father’s instructions after death are very clear - avenge him! Now Hayden must figure out which of the four other people at Elsinore Labs that night is behind it. But searching for the truth will break Hayden’s already fragile psyche. Everyone has secrets and it won’t be easy untangling them all.
This wanted to be a locked-room murder mystery based on Hamlet, but it’s just a mess. Yes, it’s based on Hamlet, but that means there is no mystery, as Hamlet is very well-known and the killer is named within the first fifty pages. The prose itself is meandering, stream-of-consciousness, and gives conflicting descriptions and continuity errors. And it’s supposedly written from multiple viewpoints but the voices all sound the same.
Content warning: self-harm, suicide ideation.
This wanted to be a locked-room murder mystery based on Hamlet, but it’s just a mess. Yes, it’s based on Hamlet, but that means there is no mystery, as Hamlet is very well-known and the killer is named within the first fifty pages. The prose itself is meandering, stream-of-consciousness, and gives conflicting descriptions and continuity errors. And it’s supposedly written from multiple viewpoints but the voices all sound the same.
Content warning: self-harm, suicide ideation.
I’m just so confused by this book. Maybe I didn’t listen to the audiobook in the right frame of mind, but I was lost from the get-go with this book and I never recovered. My biggest issue was figuring out where Hayden began and Horatio ended, in the narrative space. It meant I couldn’t grasp the emotionality and motivation of either character.
The way the book is written is gimmicky as well—it’s written in the form of snippets of interviews with one character, Felicia, as well as excerpts from Felicia’s memoir. Now, wouldn’t this make Felicia an unreliable narrator, since she obviously wouldn’t paint herself in a bad light? But the book never grapples with that angle.
People are killed during the book, but I didn’t feel the emotional weight of those deaths from any of the characters.
I have got to mention Hayden and Horatio’s…relationship. The hell did we have not one but multiple scenes of an adult man, whose been cuffed and locked up by his father’s murderer, sitting on his own and having intimate relations with Horatio, who is the AI in his head? I love that queer storylines can simply exist in storytelling, but this is a stretch. It was so awkward. Your world's come to an end, and you could be dead, so you use the super-enmeshed AI in your head, not to free yourself and catch the killer, but have sex. It was definitely…a choice.
I think what the book lacked was a sense of stakes. People have done stuff, but what propelled them to make such drastic decisions? And what happens to them and the world after? It doesn’t feel like anyone has any emotional investment in the goings-on.
I also didn’t grasp the world of the story. A locked room mystery set in the future can still provide a sense of what place these people have in their world.
I was really digging the idea of reading a different take on Hamlet, but this one leaves a lot to be desired.
The way the book is written is gimmicky as well—it’s written in the form of snippets of interviews with one character, Felicia, as well as excerpts from Felicia’s memoir. Now, wouldn’t this make Felicia an unreliable narrator, since she obviously wouldn’t paint herself in a bad light? But the book never grapples with that angle.
People are killed during the book, but I didn’t feel the emotional weight of those deaths from any of the characters.
I have got to mention Hayden and Horatio’s…relationship. The hell did we have not one but multiple scenes of an adult man, whose been cuffed and locked up by his father’s murderer, sitting on his own and having intimate relations with Horatio, who is the AI in his head? I love that queer storylines can simply exist in storytelling, but this is a stretch. It was so awkward. Your world's come to an end, and you could be dead, so you use the super-enmeshed AI in your head, not to free yourself and catch the killer, but have sex. It was definitely…a choice.
I think what the book lacked was a sense of stakes. People have done stuff, but what propelled them to make such drastic decisions? And what happens to them and the world after? It doesn’t feel like anyone has any emotional investment in the goings-on.
I also didn’t grasp the world of the story. A locked room mystery set in the future can still provide a sense of what place these people have in their world.
I was really digging the idea of reading a different take on Hamlet, but this one leaves a lot to be desired.
One of the most innovative and thrilling pieces of fiction I've read in the last few years! A queer, sci fi locked room mystery retelling of Hamlet with hauntingly beautiful prose. That pacing! That structure! That suspense and tension! I love a good retelling but only if it brings something new to the story and doesnt feel beholden to the source material, and this reinvented the story in thrilling ways staying true where it needed to and veering off course to satisfying ends. Hamlet is definitely not one of my favorite stories but HOLY MOLY did I devour this. I particularly loved the framing device of the story and the character of Horatio; not the first author to make me love an AI character but definitely one of the most unique manifestations.
Trite. I really wanted to give it an average rating, but I couldn't. Let's start with the most obvious: Elsinore, Horatia, and a dithering idiot with an H name fortunately not Hamlet. Whomever wrote the dramas attributed to Shakespeare would have been longer, more heavy handed and bloodier, but not by too much.
Hayden is the son of a famous scientist who has a lab that magically has secret places Hayden somehow never knew about. The dad is killed. Whodunit? The characters are very standard, even the AI, and the relationships are almost caricatures. Ok, not really almost.
Who did it wasn't really in doubt, the actions simplistic, the characters' inner monologues dull, and I really couldn't care about any of them.
Hayden is the son of a famous scientist who has a lab that magically has secret places Hayden somehow never knew about. The dad is killed. Whodunit? The characters are very standard, even the AI, and the relationships are almost caricatures. Ok, not really almost.
Who did it wasn't really in doubt, the actions simplistic, the characters' inner monologues dull, and I really couldn't care about any of them.
dark
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
dark
mysterious
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
dark
emotional
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
dark
emotional
sad
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes