Waiting on Wednesday is a meme hosted by Jill at Breaking the Spine. The weekly event is meant to showcase eagerly anticipated upcoming releases…and to spread the word! This week I’m excited about:
Miranda and Caliban by Jacqueline Carey
Genre: Fantasy, Retelling
Publisher: Tor Books
Anticipated Release Date: 2017
In William Shakespeare’s The Tempest, the action of the entire play unfolds over the course of a single day. But what happened on the island in the twelve years leading up to that day? Why does the magician Prospero keep his daughter Miranda ignorant of her history? Why does he take the supposedly monstrous Caliban under his wing?View Spoiler »
Miranda is a lonely child. For as long as she can remember, she and her father have lived in isolation in the abandoned Moorish palace. There are chickens and goats, and a terrible wailing spirit trapped in a pine tree, but the elusive wild boy who spies on her from the crumbling walls and leaves gifts on their doorstep is the isle’s only other human inhabitant. There are other memories, too: vague, dream-like memories of another time and another place. There are questions that Miranda dare not ask her stern and controlling father, who guards his secrets with zealous care: Who am I? Where did I come from?
The wild boy Caliban is a lonely child, too; an orphan left to fend for himself at an early age, all language lost to him. When Caliban is summoned and bound into captivity by Miranda’s father as part of a grand experiment, he rages against his confinement; and yet he hungers for kindness and love. This darkly re-imagined vision of Shakespeare’s beloved tale is told in their voices and is rife with issues of power and control, innocence and sexuality. Lovers of the fantastic, the classic, and beautiful writing will fall in love with Carey’s imaginative retelling. « Hide Spoiler
As an unabashed fan girl of The Tempest – one who’s painfully aware of how colonial attitudes shaped the writing of Caliban – I’m eagerly anticipating this retelling of Shakespeare’s play.
I’ve actually never read anything by Jacqueline Carey (I know!!!), but MIRANDA AND CALIBAN provides the perfect entry point into the beloved author’s work. Fingers crossed that she does Shakespeare justice…no pressure!
What are you waiting on this week? Are you planning on reading MIRANDA AND CALIBAN? Let me know in the comments!