The premise of this is “Hamlet re-imagined as a science-fiction locked-room thriller,” and I gotta say it really works.
Hayden Lichfield is a researcher working at Elsinore Labs, headed by his father. His uncle manages the business side of things, and his ex-girlfriend Felicia is an intern there (and the daughter of the head of security). The laboratory mainframe is a sentient AI, whom Hayden has named Horatio.
For spoiler purposes, I’m going to assume everyone is broadly familiar with the plot of the original Hamlet.
Unsurprisingly, the book opens with Hayden’s father being found dead. This triggers Horatio to show Hayden a video his father had made, warning him that people were after their research, he was probably killed over it, and asking Hayden to pay them back in kind. Their research is into revitalizing dead tissue and mapping brain patterns, with the goal of transcending death. Hayden tries to use this on his very dead father; it works enough for Hayden’s father to gasp out his brother’s name, and no more.
Complicating matters: on finding his brother’s body, Hayden’s uncle initiated a lockdown. No one is entering or leaving Elsinore Labs, and no contact with the outside can get through.
Because we know perfectly well who did it, this doesn’t have the same kind of locked-room thriller tension as something like Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None. Nevertheless, this has its own kind of tension, that very definitely ratchets up as the events of the book (which take place over a single night) come to a head.
The book shifts between three POVs: Hayden and Horatio, contemporarily, and excerpts from Felicia’s memoirs of the night. Hayden’s and Felicia’s extremely complicated feelings towards each other are central, and get exponentially more complicated as the night goes on and expected events happen.
There are two areas where the science-fiction-ization of Hamlet really shines. One is Horatio. The character always served as a sort of narrator more than anything else; having him be an AI with cameras all over Elsinore Labs works wonderfully. The other is Hayden and his father’s research. The fascination with death is one of the central themes of Shakespeare’s play, and having Hamlet be in a position to maybe actually overcome death is a great spin on the theme.
It’s a very dense book. Unsurprisingly, there’s a lot of existential angst, and a lot of messy romance drama between Hayden and Felicia. But as a retelling of Hamlet, it’s very solid. I don’t know how much appeal it would have if you’re not a fan of the original, but speaking as one, I thought it was quite well done.
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