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A review by jperine
The King of Infinite Space by Lyndsay Faye
1.0
I never thought I’d be bashing a “magical, queer, and feminist retelling of Hamlet,” but here we are.
This book is a mess. Let’s start with the buzzwords:
“Magical”: the light fantasy aspects of this novel really made no sense and seemed like an afterthought solely to make the book appealing to an additional audience. The ways that the magical characters discuss the ways that they wield their power are bogged down in senseless prose (which we’ll circle back to) to make much sense.
“Queer”: congrats, Lyndsay Faye, you wrote an Achillean romance in the 2020s. And STILL managed to drop a “f*ggot” in there! Nice! Literally the hate speech had NO purpose in that moment. Also the romance is boring because both characters are boring. Bonus points, however, for Ben identifying as demisexual.
“Feminist”: LITERALLY WHERE. Literally where? The female lead winds up being dead the whole time and just about every single moment of her arc circles back to the men in her life. The villain is SURPRISE! the mother, who is warped into a comical villain who is also incredibly boring and falls flat. Literally none of the women in this story are dynamic not hold any agency. The only “feminist” aspect of this novel I can figure out is the fact that it’s written by a woman.
“Retelling of Hamlet”: okay here’s where we get into personal preference—if you’re going to craft a retelling, let’s have consistent rules. There’s a one-for-one transfer from the original to this retelling (we are missing Laertes, however). Everyone in this novel either holds onto their original name, or goes by a shortened name (Lia, Trudy, Claude), EXCEPT for Hamlet, who is now……BEN. What?
I think the greatest flaw of the novel comes down to the rotating perspective, third-person narrative. Faye tries to imbue unique viewpoints/voice for each character, which in third person makes no sense (Horatio’s narrator using annoying British colloquialisms that felt incredibly out of place, and Ben’s narrator doing strange things with formatting and fonts to try to convey his neurodivergence…).
I genuinely do not understand how this novel has a 4-star average rating.
EDIT: and OH MY GOD how could I forget the unfathomable lack of understanding of the amount of power literally anyone who works in theatre has. Ben should’ve been the son of politicians.
This book is a mess. Let’s start with the buzzwords:
“Magical”: the light fantasy aspects of this novel really made no sense and seemed like an afterthought solely to make the book appealing to an additional audience. The ways that the magical characters discuss the ways that they wield their power are bogged down in senseless prose (which we’ll circle back to) to make much sense.
“Queer”: congrats, Lyndsay Faye, you wrote an Achillean romance in the 2020s. And STILL managed to drop a “f*ggot” in there! Nice! Literally the hate speech had NO purpose in that moment. Also the romance is boring because both characters are boring. Bonus points, however, for Ben identifying as demisexual.
“Feminist”: LITERALLY WHERE. Literally where? The female lead winds up being dead the whole time and just about every single moment of her arc circles back to the men in her life. The villain is SURPRISE! the mother, who is warped into a comical villain who is also incredibly boring and falls flat. Literally none of the women in this story are dynamic not hold any agency. The only “feminist” aspect of this novel I can figure out is the fact that it’s written by a woman.
“Retelling of Hamlet”: okay here’s where we get into personal preference—if you’re going to craft a retelling, let’s have consistent rules. There’s a one-for-one transfer from the original to this retelling (we are missing Laertes, however). Everyone in this novel either holds onto their original name, or goes by a shortened name (Lia, Trudy, Claude), EXCEPT for Hamlet, who is now……BEN. What?
I think the greatest flaw of the novel comes down to the rotating perspective, third-person narrative. Faye tries to imbue unique viewpoints/voice for each character, which in third person makes no sense (Horatio’s narrator using annoying British colloquialisms that felt incredibly out of place, and Ben’s narrator doing strange things with formatting and fonts to try to convey his neurodivergence…).
I genuinely do not understand how this novel has a 4-star average rating.
EDIT: and OH MY GOD how could I forget the unfathomable lack of understanding of the amount of power literally anyone who works in theatre has. Ben should’ve been the son of politicians.