Cooper, Susan: King of Shadows
“King of Shadows” is a very gripping story and you should read it, too. I would recommend it to people who like stories by Shakespeare. If you do not know “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” you might be a bit confused in the beginning.
Nathan Field (Nat) is a young teenager, who is raised by his aunt, because both parents are dead. Nathan has great difficulties getting over the death of his parents. The only real thing that still makes him happy is acting.
The story starts as Nathan joins up with a very good theatre group in London´s Globe Theatre, to play Shakespeare´s “Midsummer Night´s Dream”. One day during the rehearsals, Nat feels ill and has to go to hospital. The doctors think Nat is sick with the plague. In the fever he has dreams. He dreams that he is thrown into the air and wakes up 400 years earlier in time, in Elizabethan England in 1599. This is the time when Shakespeare is getting ready to stage “A Midsummer Night´s Dream” at the original Globe Theatre for the first time. Nathan is taken on by Shakespeare and is very happy to meet the playwright, who is also one of his idols. Nat is asked to play Puck and trains very hard with the actors of the Globe Theatre, also called the Lord Chamberlain´s Men. The best and also most moving part of the book is when Nat gets emotional about the death of his parents and Shakespeare comes out as a father-figure.
In my own opinion, this book is very well-written, in a good understandable way. I would not have read it, if my teacher had not recommended it to me. In fact, I would not even have looked at it as the cover is not very pretty and I do not like the title, it is totally inappropriate. But the story is good!
I learned from this book to not judge a book by its cover but read the blurb at the back!
Cooper, Susan: King of Shadows
Rating: ****
Pages: 190
Genre: historical novel with fantastic elements
Signatur: FE.J / COO
© Review and Illustration: Clare Zinnecker, 5am (September 2018)