I received an eARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.
Hamlet is one of my favorite of Shakespeare’s plays, so the moment I saw the concept of Hamlet mixed with robots and AI, I was all in. This is everything I could have wanted in a Shakespearian retelling. This Hamlet is equal parts charming and cutting. I highlighted multiple times where I stopped because I was in awe of how much this author understood Hamlet as a character and made him feel like a real person, despite being an android, and where his snarkiness and pettiness really felt like they hit at the core of who Hamlet was originally described as.
Making a large portion of the cast into college students, turning some of the traditionally male characters into female counterparts, the added dimensions to the questions of humanity and morality when a large portion of the cast are androids, and the update to Hamlet’s romantic arc all make this into a fresh and modern retelling that I found refreshing. It was a struggle to put this book down before I made it to the inevitable ending. I found the translation of the fifth act into this modernized and somewhat futuristic world to be the weakest aspect of this retelling, but it still did a good job of carrying the necessary weight and emotion of concluding a tragedy.