A Plague On Both Your Houses

Published:  February 4th, 2014

Prince Of Shadows

By: Rachel Caine

NAL

ISBN-13:  9780451414410

In the Houses of Montague and Capulet, there is only one goal: power.  The boys are born to fight and die for honor and -- if they survive -- marry for influence and money, not love.  The girls are assets, to be spent wisely.  Their wishes are of no import.  Their fates are written on the day they are born.

Benvolio Montague, cousin to Romeo, knows all this.  He expects to die for his cousin, for his house, but a spark of rebellion still lives in him.  At night, he is the Prince of Shadows, the greatest thief in Verona -- and he risks all as he steals from House Capulet.  In doing so, he sets eyes on convent-bound Rosaline, and a terrible curse begins that will claim the lives of many in Verona...

...And will rewrite all their fates, forever.

Review

     Retellings are something that I love to try, because I hate to see a good story end.  As a younger person I was NOT a fan of Romeo + Juliet, thinking that they were beyond stupid and I couldn't understand why people romanticized their story.  But as an adult I look at them and think, "Those poor, stupid teenagers.  That's not what love is and they never had a chance to figure that out."  I was intrigued when I learned that Rachel Caine, whose Morganville Vampire series I happen to love, was writing a R&J retelling from Benvolio's point of view I was excited.  I am definitely happy that I gave it a chance!  In this book, set months before the events of the infamous Shakespeare play, Benvolio is chafing at the bit of family responsibility.  His rebellion is to be the greatest thief Verona has ever known, the Prince of Shadows, and humilate all of his enemies.  One night, he decides to attempt a truly deadly theft and steal from Tybalt Capulet.  While in the Capulet household, Benvolio is seen by Rosaline and the interaction between the two promises that things will never again be the same.  Then Benvolio's domineering Grandmother orders him to retrieve Romeo's love letters to Rosaline, and stop his infatuation.  All this while Benvolio is trying to hide Mercutio's love affair with another man from everyone, for fear of his friend being put to death.  When everything comes crashing down around them, will both Montagues and Capulets be cursed beyond redemption?  Or will Benvolio and Rosaline be able to bring themselves out of destruction and start over again?

     The majority of this book was set before the events of the original play, which in and of itself was different than the majority of retellings.  Most of them seem to be set during and in the aftermath.  But this book chose to give readers a backstory and some reasoning for the whole disastrous sequence of events.  I love Benvolio as a narrator!  It was wonderful to get his side of the story, since in the play he's basically just Romeo's right-hand man.  I also liked seeing Rosaline as more than just a mere mention and learning a bit more of who she actually was.  In this version, she is strong, feisty and makes up her own mind.  But she is also a practical realist.  Rosaline just wants to go to the convent and be away from the whole mess between the Capulets and Montagues - and away from her brother Tybalt's rage and heavy hand.  Probably my absolute favorite thing about this retelling though, was the focus on Mercutio, his story and the reasons for his behavior, etc.  I loved the relationship between him, Romeo and Benvolio (both of whom are keeping Mercutio's secrets).  They has some great quips and banter going on, and the scenes with Romeo and Mercutio creating drunken diversions for Benvolio's thieving were hilarious.  

     I think the only thing that seemed abrupt and out of place were the random inclusions of Shakespeare's dialogue, sometimes slightly butchered, and the inclusion of witchcraft and curses.  The book has a decidedly modern feel to it, and though witchcraft was often in Shakespeare's plays and it was a plausible explanation for the whole mess, it still felt kind of odd and out of place in this particular book.  Overall though, this was definitely a great read for fans of R&J, but not necessarily the actual characters of Romeo and Juliet.  They are both shown to be what they were in this book: thoughtless, dreamy children with a penchant for leaping before they looked.  I would recommend this one though.  It was definitely worth my time.

VERDICT:  4/5  Stars

**No money or favors were exchanged for this review.  This book is now available in stores, online, or maybe even at your local library.**

Cozy Classics: Jane Eyre

Published:  November 20th, 2013

Cozy Classics: Jane Eyre (Cozy Classics)

By: Jack & Holman Wang

Simply Read Books

ISBN-13:  9781927018316

Give a kid a classic!  Cozy Classics is the popular board book series that presents well-loved stories to children age 0+ through twelve child-friendly words and twelve needle-felted illustrations.  Jane Eyre is Charlotte Bronte's mysterious romance about a young governess who discovers a terrible secret about the man she loves, and is one of the world's most beloved classics.  Now you can share this classic with children of any age.  www.mycozyclassics.com

Review

     So for anyone who didn't catch my first review, this is my second foray into the Cozy Classics books.  My first was their version of Jane Austen's Emma, which I found truly adorable and hilariously fun to read/interpret as an adult who has read the original book.  I can say that I was laughing throughout this one as well.  The biggest issue that I had was how little it actually represented the original story.  But as other reviewers (and I myself) have said, representing a literary classic in just twelve words, with felt puppets staged around is not an easy endeavor!  Jane Eyre is pretty complex story, not necessarily more so than Emma, just in very different contexts.  It's a lot easier to allude to social niceties and blunders, mixed with romance/friendship than it is to talk about the crazy wife in the attic.  

     It introduces the reader to Jane (the word "girl") sitting at a table with a book, looking miserable.  Next we see the word "red" and she is pictured looking terrifed and trying to wrest open the door to the red room of her nightmares.  The third word is "stand" and has Jane on a stool at the front of a classroom, being humiliated.  These are the only words we're given to represent Jane's mess of a childhood.  While the less horrific of some of the things that could've been shown to children, it also doesn't do much to tell us what exactly is going on - unless we already know (as lots of adults probably already know the gist of the story).  Then we get "woman", with Jane all grown up (I respect that the Wangs make the Jane puppet plain looking in accordance with the story.  It could be tempting to do otherwise, especially when marketing a romantic classic to children!)  We are introduced to Rochester on the ground, clutching his knee ("fall").  Probably the most nonsensical thing about this is how far in the background his horse happens to be, when he's just fallen from it.  We next see Rochester leaning on Jane and limping away from the scene of misfortune (help) and all of the sudden he's recovered, they're holding hands and about to kiss each other (appropriately titled "kiss").  I like the light filtering in between them and the trees, and the happy looks on the puppets' faces.  Especially considering the shit's about to hit the fan!

     This is when the action (if you can call it that) starts to take place in the book, with Rochester leading Jane to the attic to tell her the big secret ("stairs" with her veil in hand and trailing after them) and running away, obviously upset ("leave").  This is very confusing without prior context.  What's so important about the stairs?  Why is Jane running away two seconds later, upset and not wanting to be around the man she was in "kiss" position with only two pages ago?  Either this book is meant for babies who won't ask questions or adults who will find it a fun exercise in terse storytelling with beautifully crafted visuals.  It's fun to speculate on that as well!  Next we seen Jane on a doorstep with her eyes closed ("cold") and Rochester backed into a corner with a fire raging in front of him ("hot").  The last scene depicted has Jane once again with Rochester, smiling and leading him to a chair with his eyes closed ("care").  I believe that the Wangs did the best they could to depict the full story, but to a child this would probably come across pretty confusing.  I think that last scene should have had bandages over Rochester's eyes probably, to depict the fact that he was blind a little more clearly.  The whole reason Jane leaves when she finds out about Rochester's crazy wife is that she's got a serious moral backbone, but also a devalued sense of self in that she doesn't think she was enough for him anyways.  An extremely difficult thing to depict in a children's board book, with twelve words, when trying to give any sense of story as well.  All that aside, I had fun once again with this concept (even if it wasn't quite as good as Emma). 

VERDICT:  3/5  Stars

*I received an Advanced Reading E-book Copy from the publisher, Simply Read Books, via NetGalley.  No money or favors were exchanged for this review.  This book was published November 20th, 2013.*

The Classics Club

     So, I don't know if I'm the only one who feels like they slack off on reading the classics (especially now that I'm not in school anymore).  But when I saw this on the blog of someone who visited my blog, I thought to myself that it must be fate.  The challenge behind this book club, The Classics Club, is to come up with a list of "classic" novels, novellas, short story collections, etc. (published within the last 25 years) with at least 50 titles, if not more, and read them all within the next five years.  We set our own pace, choose our own titles and do it for the fun time we'll have! :)  So who's with me everyone?  I should finish this list by October 1st, 2018 at the latest and will link each blog post about the titles on here back to this post.  Here's my list of 100 books (no certain order):

Fiction



Adams, Richard "Watership Down"
Alcott, Louisa May "Hospital Sketches"
Angelou, Maya "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings"
Austen, Jane "Lady Susan" "Sanditon" "The Watsons" (grouped together, all shorter works)
Barrie, J.M. "Peter Pan"
Beagle, Peter S. "The Last Unicorn"
Bradbury, Ray "The Illustrated Man"
Bronte, Anne "Agnes Grey"
Bronte, Anne "The Tenant of Wildfell Hall"
Bronte, Charlotte "Shirley"
Burgess, Anthony "A Clockwork Orange"
Burroughs, Edgar Rice "Tarzan of the Apes"
Burroughs, Edgar Rice "A Princess of Mars" "The Gods of Mars"
Cather, Willa "O! Pioneers"
Chopin, Kate "The Awakening"
Collins, Wilkie "The Woman in White"
Collodi, Carlo "The Adventures of Pinocchio"
Cooper, James Fenimore "The Deerslayer"
Crane, Stephen "Red Badge of Courage"
Defoe, Daniel "Robinson Crusoe"
Dickens, Charles "Little Dorrit"
Dickens, Charles "The Old Curiosity Shop"
Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan "The Hound of the Baskervilles"
Dreiser, Theodore "An American Tragedy"
Dumas, Alexandre "The Three Musketeers"
Eliot, George "Daniel Deronda"
Eliot George "The Mill on the Floss"
Fitzgerald, F. Scott "Tender Is The Night"
Forster, E.M. "A Passage to India"
Gaskell, Elizabeth "North and South"
Gaskell, Elizabeth "Wives and Daughters"
Gibbons, Stella "Cold Comfort Farm"
Grahame, Kenneth "The Wind in the Willows"
Hansberry, Lorraine "A Raisin In the Sun"
Hardy, Thomas "Return of the Native"
Hardy, Thomas "Tess of the D'Urbervilles"
Heller, Joseph "Catch-22"
Hellman, Lillian "Little Foxes"
Hesse, Hermann "Siddhartha"
Hinton, S.E. "Rumble Fish"
Hugo, Victor "The Hunchback of Notre Dame"
Huxley, Aldous "Island"
Irving, Washington "Histories, Tales and Sketches"
James, Henry "Turn of the Screw"
Kerouac, Jack "On the Road"
Kesey, Ken "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest"
Kipling, Rudyard "The Jungle Books"
Leroux, Gaston "The Phantom of the Opera"
Lofting, Hugh "The Voyages of Doctor Doolittle"
London, Jack "White Fang"
MacDonald, George "The Princess and the Goblin"
Mansfield, Katherine "The Garden Party and Other Stories"
Maugham, W. Somerset "The Razor's Edge"
Miller, Arthur "All My Sons"
Nesbit, E. "The Enchanted Castle"
O'Brien, Robert C. "Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH"
Orczy, Baroness "The Scarlet Pimpernel"
Plath, Sylvia "The Bell Jar"
Poe, Edgar Allan "Collected Stories and Poems"
Porter, Eleanor H. "Pollyanna" (DONE)
Porter, Gene Stratton "Freckles"
Pyle, Howard "The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood"
Radcliffe, Anne "The Mysteries of Udolpho"
Rawls, Wilson "Where the Red Fern Grows"
Scott, Sir Walter "Lady of the Lake"
Sewell, Anna "Black Beauty"
Shakespeare, William "A Midsummer Night's Dream"
Shakespeare, William "Merchant of Venice"
Shakespeare, William "Much Ado About Nothing"
Shakespeare, William "The Taming of the Shrew"
Sinclair, Upton "The Jungle"
Smith, Betty "A Tree Grows In Brooklyn"
Steinbeck, John "The Grapes of Wrath"
Sterne, Laurence "Tristam Shandy"
Stevenson, Robert Louis "The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde"
Stevenson, Robert Louis "The Island of Dr. Moreau"
Stoker, Bram "Dracula"
Stoppard, Tom "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead"
Thoreau, Henry David "Walden"
Travers, P.L. "Mary Poppins" (DONE)
Twain, Mark "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer"
Verne, Jules "Journey to the Center of the Earth"
Walker, Alice "The Color Purple"
Watson, Winifred "Miss Pettigrew Lives For a Day"
Waugh, Evelyn "Brideshead Revisted"
Wells, H.G. "The War of the Worlds"
Wharton, Edith "The Buccaneers"
Wilde, Oscar "The Picture of Dorian Gray"
Wilder, Thornton "Our Town"
Woolf, Virginia "Mrs. Dalloway"
Wyss, Johan David "The Swiss Family Robinson"
Zindel, Paul "The Pigman"

Non-Fiction

de Quincy, Thomas "Confessions of an English Opium Eater"
Douglass, Frederick "A Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass"
Emerson, Ralph Waldo "Self-Reliance and Other Essays"
Franklin, Benjamin "1726 Journal"
Wiesel, Elie "Night"
Paine, Thomas "Common Sense"
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques "On The Social Contract" 
Gilbreth Jr., Frank B. "Cheaper By the Dozen"