Genre: Romance | Pages: 250
Star rating:
Book introduction by Aretino Wilde :
I’d like to introduce you to ROMEO AND JULIET: A SATIRE, aimed at those who want a lighter version of one of the greatest classics of literature, namely for students who want to get the gist of the book without feeling intimidated or bored by the typical scholar-like approach.
This satire happens 500 years into the future, it includes robots, it suggests Romeo was more attracted to Juliet due to her "proportions" than to a pure form of deeply romantic love, and it even includes a Karate Jesus character!
I think your audience would be interested in a book that could make the typical Shakespeare scholar choke, but which could actually make Shakespeare’s classic work easier to understand, in a fun and satirical way for students and for readers in general.
My review:
Let me get this out of my system and just say go check out how he introduced his book "ROMEO AND JULIET: A Satire" on Goodreads and then get back to this review. My god, this guy is hi-larious! Everything he has to say from the introduction to the whole story is extremely funny it just makes me sound dumb trying to describe it. I'd really suggest everyone to realize that the book is a "mash-up" parody of ROMEO AND JULIET before starting to read the book with the wrong idea. It is not a re-write of the story in new English. It is not the same story re-said in a modern day set-up. But it is way funnier than that. If you're someone who doesn't enjoy parodies of books, this is not for you.
Aretino starts of with a small poem in the PROLOGUE which is very new age and catchy and still gives you the feel of the original Romeo and Juliet with a twist. Right before that he has a really cool way of dealing with plagiarism lawsuits right at the beginning stating "The scary legal stuff " which is so humorous that you'd probably die laughing. The brain and the nerve this guy has! This book is presented the same way the original has, only this time you can understand it. The whole book is written in the form of a play with dialog exchanged by the characters and the stage set up explanation.
This story is now set up in the far future- 2519 to be precise. There is a lot of teen drama that is very relevant to the new age and not the over-romanticized version of the original Shakespeare, not that I didn't enjoy the original. It has robots and modern lingo and a mindset that goes along with teenage from the new eras. While a large portion of the book is focused on sexual stuff and some weird kink, this book has it's own funny quirks which is a light and funny alternate that I'm happy to go through. It is a silly but comical spoof of ROMEO AND JULIET: A Satire by William Shakespeare which keeps you laughing out load throughout. The writer - Aretino Wilde made a parody of several scenes of the original which is far from disappointing It has robo-soldiers and robo-cooks and a bratty Juliet that I'm sure a lot of readers would enjoy. If readers like these kinds of joke and reads the book with low expectations, he or she will probably enjoy this play a lot.
Spoofs can sometimes be heavy-handedness but Aretino managed to lay just enough comedy that didn’t feel too extra with this book. He has shown that mocking romanticized teenage love is the best kind of comedy there is. Even with a classic like William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet! Apart from some ambiguous scenes and a bit of a drag sometimes, I quite enjoyed the book.
This book has been a wonderful light reading after a real intense one and I'm really glad I got to this before I picked up any other book.
About the book and author:
The book is available for pre-order on Amazon Kindle.
Here is a snippet of Aretino's book introduction on Goodread for you to get a sense of the kind of writer her is:"After spending decades as an obsessive comedy nerd, I finally decided to put some pants on and write my own little satire. Are you even wearing pants? I’m wearing pants. I guess I wasn’t going to judge if you weren’t. Why are we talking about your pants? "
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