Once again Tessa Gratton has made magic with her retelling of Shakespeare's plays of Henry VI. If you have never read the bard, don't worry! If you are familiar with the original plays do not be afraid of this gender swapping retelling!. Prince Hal is captured once again with all their faults and full of inspiration. I could not get enough of Lady Hotspur and it will be an adventure for you also! ( )

Like its predecessor, "The Queens of Innis Lear," "Lady Hotspur" is a rich and satisfying novel *very* loosely based on stories best known from Shakespeare.

In Gratton's re-telling of the tale, Shakespeare's Prince Henry "Hal" Bolingbroke is re-cast as the female Celadia Bolingbroke who -- for reasons that are never really explained, goes by the nickname of "Hal." Harry "Hotspur" Percy is now Isarna Percy. Instead of being strangers, they are best friends and knights, along with Banna Mora, the female heir to the throne of Armoreia. The usurpation of King Rossavos by Hal's mother -- the exiled Bolingbroke -- removes Mora from the line of succession and places Hal there. A prophecy from Innis Lear about "The lion, the wolf, and the dragon" places the three women under a shadow of future strife.

Like Shakespeare's Prince Hal, this Hal is a "Prince of Riot," but unlike Shakespeare's character her riot is an expression of her inner turmoil not a deliberate masquerade. And this Hal and Hotspur fall deeply, desperately in love.

When Banna Mora loses a battle and is taken hostage by the forces of Innis Lear, she finds a surprising new home, family, and vision, leading -- after hundreds of pages -- to a final battle and a wild act of magic which will re-make both countries.

I enjoyed this book a great deal, despite a few slow spots, but I kept wondering why Gratton once again felt it necessary to clearly and deliberately invoke Shakespeare when she could have told these stories without those resonances. Like so many re-told Arthurian tales, these characters are so different, and the events so far from those of the "canon" that there doesn't seem to be any point to it. This isn't a peek into the minds and hearts of Shakespeare's characters, these are completely new stories. One doesn't need Shakespeare to invoke the themes of royal legitmacy, "the deaths of kings," ambition, friendship, loyalty, and magic.

This Hal and Hotspur have nothing to do with Shakespeare's characters, and deserved their own names and their own story. Ironically, that is also one of the themes of the work: who defines a person's story.

Although this book could conceivably stand alone, I strongly recommend reading "The Queens of Innis Lear" first, because so much of the culture of Innis Lear and the magic which overtakes the three heroines is explained much more deeply in the first book, and the actions and histories of several of those characters reverberate in this one. ( )

Part of the Queens of Innis Lear duology. It takes inspiration from another Shakespeare play (and yet another one that I'm not familiar with) but knowledge isn't really necessary - though now I want to read boith plays. THis is a gender-changed version, Hal Bollingbrooke and Hotspur are both female and Banna Mora too. It's several generations after the events of The Queens and the characters of the first are more legend than real people.
Banna Mora has joined a rebellion that deposes the king and leaves Hal Bollingbrooke the next heir, she's reluctant and wants nothing more than Lady Hotspur Percy. Theres a lot of marriages for dynastic reasons and breaking of hearts but the ending felt right and felt like a winding up of the series. I also like how the different lives wind around each other.
Like Queens it's a dense read and needed my attention. While I had started this before reading book 1 the world didn't make as much sense without reading the first. I suspect you could read this one without reading the first but it worked for me this way. It as adsorbing and interesting. I could also see how it could not be some people's jam. ( )

Anyway, now that I'm finished, I mostly liked it. I think it could have been, like, a LOT shorter and still lovely, but I feel that way about quite a bit of epic fantasy tbh. I really enjoyed the characters and their relationships, though I did feel like they were not very good at talking to each other in useful ways. I'd say it was worth it, but didn't leave me dying to read more in the universe.

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This is super long, so I probably won't finish the audio before it returns, but I'm enjoying it quite a bit so far. I'll most likely need to finish it in hard copy. Also, after a quick scan of the reviews on GoodReads, I have Thoughts™. At four hours into the audio, I'm not confused about what's going on, I have no trouble differentiating characters from one another, and I think the story is really interesting. I haven't read The Queens of Innis Lear, and so far that hasn't been a problem. This seems to set me at odds with other reviewers.

It's part of why I am always deeply skeptical of reviews for long fantasy books that are like "this is so confusing! How do I tell all these characters apart? Why is this so long?" Mostly, I assume that a reader who is asking those questions about a big fantasy book has very different reading taste from myself. Some of the top GR reviews right now call this book incoherent, dense, and confusing. Like, I'm not even very far into it yet, but I'd say if you like epic fantasy you're not gonna be thrown too hard by the style here.

Okay, end of Thoughts™. ( )