Divided about Something Wicked by Alan Gratz

First off, apologies for the delays in writing lately. I've been reading, but VERY slowly lately. I currently have three classes in the midst of writing research papers, which I absolutely love teaching (no, I'm not joking!), but this means that I find that I have less "me-time" than usual-- which equates with less fun reading and difficulty finding the time to blog. Nonetheless, I did finish a book recently: Something Wicked by Alan Gratz. This book is a sequel to Something Rotten (I also reviewed this about a month ago).

While Something Rotten is based on Hamlet, Something Wicked is based on the story of MacBeth. Both stories are told by Horatio, who was a minor character from the original Hamlet, the modern day Horatio, who tells these two stories, is anything but minor. Because these stories are based off of Shakespeare's originals, it's hard to decide how I feel about this interpretation because they are based loosely on the originals. Maybe we need to make a pros & cons list so that we can really see which side I think should win. (Maybe I have been teaching research papers a little TOO much.)

PROS:
1. This is a modern day version of MacBeth.
2. Horatio is a snarky narrator.
3. Horatio is a trustworthy narrator, minus his penchant for cute, smart girls. (This actually could make us like him more because we approve of his taste in women.)
4. The setting is on a mountain at a Scottish festival-- which tries to tie in the setting of Scotland from the original.
5. The protagonist is Joe MacKenzie (Mac for short) and he's dating Beth Weigel (hence, Mac + Beth.
6. People actually die in this book.
7. Mac is obviously being manipulated through sex; it isn't just an allusion to sex. He actually states that he acts in such a way to make himself more desirable to Beth.
8. Good guy wins; bad guy loses (Sorry for the spoiler, but you should have seen this coming if you read Something Rotten).
9. There's a "greed is bad" theme.
10. Some of the original themes still hold true: greed, murder, manipulation, mental illness...
11. Some relatively light-hearted reading because of the humor and the tone... the death seems campy rather than serious.
12. While it makes references to sex and death, it's pretty tame and could definitely be used as a teaching tool to introduce MacBeth or other Shakespeare.
13. Bonus points for creativity: MacBeth has now been turned into a murder mystery.

CONS:
1. Snarky narrator (Horatio) is so snarky that it almost feels forced. He's so cool that he isn't believable.
2. Horatio was a minor character in Hamlet and wasn't a character at all in MacBeth... so why in the world is he even in this story?
3. Not enough people die. Seriously, it's supposed to be a tragedy and it ends all hunky-dorey... not sure that I like this. It seems too sugar coated. Main characters that are supposed to die, don't. I think this influences the story in such a way that it's not reliable.
4. Horatio's girl dies, but it seems so out of the blue and Horatio seems so non-chalant about it that I actually thought I'd mis-read something for about three pages. I finally realized that it was just THAT random and it didn't seem necessary to push the plot forward and it didn't gel with the Shakespeare version.
5. Many of the characters names are borrowed from other Shakespeare plays: Juliet, Desdemona, Horatio, etc.
6. The main characters' names don't follow MacBeth, but a many of them are a attempting to connect with the orignal.
7. The character symbolic of Lady MacBeth doesn't commit suicide. Come on, we were all hoping for it since she's such a despicable character. It feels like a little justice was lost by her not offing herself.
8. Too many red herrings. Right away we know that Mac is the killer, but Horatio can't wrap his narrator-brain around this. It's annoying to have so many clues, but then just have to wait for Horatio to figure out how his best friend really was the murderer.
9. The tone is definitely not that which Shakespeare intended. MacBeth was meant as a warning against greed and manipulation. It is the thing that horror movies may be made of, but this version is light-hearted and even ends on a positive note.
10. This version will definitely not prepare students for the serious nature of the true MacBeth and if students thought that they could simply reverse engineer this version to have the basic names and plot points, they'd be sorely mistaken.

Conclusion: Overall, I'm torn. Read this book if you want something silly with a snarky narrator. Do NOT read this book if you're expecting Shakespeare's story. The connections to Shakespeare can be fun, but for a serious connoisseur, the unnecessary changes to the original story can be very distracting and downright annoying. I like to use such versions to teach comparison and contrast skills to my seniors. After being introduced to both stories, I have my seniors fix the modern day version by killing off the necessary characters and making sure that the same victors win in the end as those Shakespeare had originally intended.