Choose your own adventure Hamlet. Simple concept, really, yet wonderfully complex. There are over a hundred endings, each with its own illustration. Reading this book is like playing a game, and I’m very happy to note that game-play can continue for hours at a stretch, while at the same time being interruptible. I can read for a bit to one of the endings and pick it back up a few days later starting at the beginning (or any one of the points where my story split the last time around) and it feels fresh. I can even play as Ophelia or the Ghost of King Hamlet. Instead of a play-within-a-play to highlight Claudius’ guilt, we have a choosable-path-book-within-a-choosable-path-book. I really can’t imagine anything better.
Ryan North makes it easy for the reader who wants to follow the original path set by Shakespeare by marking it with little skulls. Doing this really highlights just how poor a decision-maker Hamlet really was. Clearly, I can do better. That’s one of the reasons I’m so glad this book exists: so I can fix Hamlet.
Did you know that Hamlet and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern went on a boat to England, were attacked by pirates, survived the attack, and returned to Denmark? I’ve read the play and seen one of the film versions a couple of times, and still did not remember this part. At all. This is likely because Shakespeare only devoted a line or two to the whole thing. That’s obviously a flaw in the Bard’s judgment there. Ryan North corrects this by expanding the pirate scenes, for which we should all thank him.
Basically, this book is an absolute necessity for everyone, whether you are a Shakespeare fan or not. Go pick it up today!
Review by Jessica A.
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