Manga Shakespeare "Hamlet" adapted by Richard Appignanesi, illustrated by Emma Vieceli

Occasionally, I find a graphic novel version of Hamlet that I haven't read before.  Or, as in this case, my husband finds one for me :-)  I've read at least three others -- maybe I ought to do a post here comparing them sometime.

This one is set in the future.  The prologue says, "The year is 2107.  Global climate change has devastated the Earth.  This is now a cyberworld in constant dread of war.  Prince Hamlet of Denmark has come home to face an uncertain future..."  By setting it in a futuristic cyberworld, they were able to emphasize the "truth vs. illusion" aspects of this story really well, I thought.  What's real, and what is someone just trying to convince you of via lies and trickery?

I found some of the trappings a little weird -- people have ports like headphone jacks in their bodies that they can plug what are basically USB drives into to exchange information, rather than reading letters, and so on.  Also, Hamlet had two ports like that in one of his arms, but they never got used or explained.  Hmm.

They used the original text, in abbreviated form, and chopped up/rearranged only a few lines, rather than paraphrasing.

The artwork was good, if you like manga.  I don't love the manga style, but I don't hate it either.  It was all black-and-white except for a semi-colored Dramatis Personae at the front of the book.  They didn't play up the sexier aspects of the story much, so I'm going to let my 12-yr-old read this now that I've finished it.

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG-13 for scary images (ghosts and skulls, y'all) and violence.

This is my 20th book read for #theunreadshelfproject2020 -- I'm halfway to my goal of 40 books read from my TBR shelves this year!