The authors of this book say, "Though we bow before Shakespeare's genius and freely acknowledge that nothing we have done here could have existed without his words as a starting point, we wanted to make the story--not the play, but the story--our own." Well, they succeeded.This book was *full* of love, hate, avarice, machination, intrigue, battle, blood, sex, turmoil, angst, misery, grief, good, evil, etc., etc. I could not put this one down! I love Shakespeare's Macbeth, but this novel pays homage to that play, and then explodes the *story* wide open and makes it bigger, bolder, and more real and relatable. Characters are made into three-dimensional, flesh and blood people in this story. They are given life, which makes the basic drama as laid out by Shakespeare even more impactful and gut-wrenching.
There were only two passages in this book that I didn't much care for. One I just found personally distasteful, and the other I found to be a little bit confusing due to the drug trip that our protagonist was apparently experiencing at the time. While both of these passages stick with me, neither wounds the story enough for me to call this book anything less than amazing. Read this story alongside Shakespeare's play, read it instead of Shakespeare's play, but do read it.