Looks like I'm Shakespeare-bingeing this month. I just finished
The Serpent of Venice Christopher Moore's fabulous follow-up to
Fool (pardon me while I alliterate), which gleefully mashes up plots and characters from "King Lear", "Othello" and "The Merchant Of Venice."
And now I've segued into Kate Danley's
Queen Mab: A Tale Entwined with William Shakespeare's Romeo & Juliet, a fantasy woven in and out of "Romeo and Juliet". Danley had me at the first hint of turning Mercutio — one of the most lamented of all the Bard's untimely deaths — into the hero of her tale. So far, so good, a third of the way into the book, so stay tuned…
Btw, Danley has been writing for four years, maintains three ongoing, multi-volume fantasy series and several stand-alones, and is entirely self-published. The formatting in "Queen Mab" can be a bit wonky from page to page, and the print seems enormous, but the cover is gorgeous and her storytelling skills are highly accomplished.