Lady Macbeth's Daughter

 


Review of Lady Macbeth's Daughter by Lisa Klein


Overview from www.goodreads.com: Albia has grown up with no knowledge of her mother of her father, the powerful Macbeth. Instead she knows the dark lure of the Wychelm Wood and the moors, where she’s been raised by three strange sisters. It’s only when the ambitious Macbeth seeks out the sisters to foretell his fate that Albia’s life becomes tangled with the man who leaves nothing but bloodshed in his wake. She even falls in love with Fleance, Macbeth’s rival for the throne. Yet when Albia learns that she has the second sight, she must decide whether to ignore the terrible future she foresees—or to change it. Will she be able to save the man she loves from her murderous father?  And can she forgive her parents their wrongs, or must she destroy them to save Scotland from tyranny?

In her highly anticipated follow-up to Ophelia, Lisa Klein delivers a powerful reimagining of Shakespeare’s Macbeth, featuring a young woman so seamlessly drawn it seems impossible she was not part of the Bard’s original play.

My Review:

Double, double, toil and trouble boil out the cauldron in this retelling of Shakespeare’s Macbeth but with a twist. Macbeth and his lady have a daughter.

After being promised by an old hag soothsayer that he will have lots of sons, Macbeth, thane of Moray, flies into a rage when a daughter with a deformed leg is born to him and Lady Grelach (Macbeth). He orders the girl killed and thus begins the descent of the Macbeth’s marriage into the abyss.

Unbeknownst to either parent however, Lady Macbeth’s maid Rhuven saves the child, giving her to her sister to raise her. They name her Albia. She grows up not knowing her true origin and wondering about her family’s connection to the later King Macbeth.

This story is somewhat short as it is a YA Historical Fiction story but that does not mean that it is lacking. The interjection of Albia into the story works very well. I don’t want to spoil the ending but Albia herself becomes part of the story so that she seems as likely as the others to be a character in this play. It is as though she belonged in this story all along and was accidently omitted by the Bard. She fits in that well.

I am not sure however that I liked the witch characters all that much, the others that is. Sure they saved Albia’s life but with the exception of her adopted mother, they always seem to be up to some mischief. They want to tinker with fate and sometimes it seems that they are cruel to other characters when they do it.

I love Albia’s story however and since she features strongly in the plot, I kept reading. I would highly recommend this story to anyone with an interest in the Shakespeare play or Medieval Scotland in general. It also has some beautiful quotes. The only thing that saddened me about was that I found it at a dollar store. I don’t think it deserves to be there.

Contains: some violence and sexually suggestive scenes.


P.S. My apologizes for not posting a review last week. My personal life was crazy and I just didn't get to it.

Wondrous Strange

Review of Wondrous Strange by Lesley Livingston

Overview from www.bn.com: Since the dawn of time, the Faerie have taken. . . .

Seventeen-year-old actress Kelley Winslow always thought faeries were just something from childhood stories. Then she meets Sonny Flannery. He's a changeling—a mortal taken as an infant and raised among Faerie—and within short order he's turned Kelley's heart inside out and her life upside down.

For Kelley's beloved Central Park isn't just a park—it's a gateway between her ordinary city and the Faerie's dangerous, bewitching Otherworld. Now Kelley's eyes are opening not just to the Faerie that surround her, but to the heritage that awaits her . . . a destiny both wondrous and strange.

My Review:

And I go off the path I have been on lately to review a story called Wondrous Strange which is part of a series of the same name. It is the first book in the series and is based loosely, I think, on Shakespeare’s play, A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

I won’t go into the details of the Bard’s play, you’ll have to read that one for yourself if you’re interested, but most of the main characters are featured in this story. Because of the writer’s attempt to make it so the reader will not miss the fact that this story is connected with the Shakespeare play; the story is a little slow to start. We begin not with our opening action but instead with what are presumably are main character’s notes on the Shakespeare play which her theater group will perform in very off, off Broadway production.

This is actually the biggest negative for the book since it is the first thing that the reader sees when he or she gets past the Table of Contents and begins to read the story. I for one had no idea why I was being given a summary of Shakespeare’s play along with “Kelly’s notes.” I kept asking myself, what does this have to do with this book? Who the heck is Kelly and why should I care about her notes? I actually thought of quitting right then and there but thought I should at least give the author some time to make her point.

I am sure glad that I did because overall it is a really good story. I then discovered that Kelly is the main character. She is a young girl who is following her dream of being an actress. Cliché, I know but she is not a typical wanna-be actress as we soon discover. In fact, she is not even mortal though she does not know this yet.

She finally gets a break when the lead actress, to whom she is an understudy, gets sick and cannot play the part. But it doesn’t start off well. And in an effort to relearn her lines, she goes to Central Park to practice where she meets Sonny. Sonny is no ordinary mortal either and he is drawn in by her “firecracker” energy. He makes the mistake of talking to her and their relationship just kind of snowballs into love from there.

Unfortunately there are others who want a piece of Kelly and not for all the right reasons. Sonny needs to figure who they are before it is too late while keeping up his job as a Janus guard for the Faerie King Oberon. The ensuing tale is quite a ride and manages to hold out the suspense right up to the end which is why I am recommending it.

Contains: some language though not excessive