Rating: Summary: Fresh ideas, good concept--mind stimulating! Review: "These Our Revels" is I think one of the best historical novels I've read. The historical aspect of the flashback added a new element to my understanding of the Forever Knight characters the way they were portrayed in the other two books, and the character interactions were true to established show canon. The language was a little difficult to navigate around when I first delved in, but it soon proved to add to the feeling of the story. As a fresh take on the established premise, I think the plot worked well. Great job!
Rating: Summary: Very interesting but requires dedicated concentration Review: As a die hard Forever Knight fan I am always hungry for new books to feed my literary appetite. But reading this book was something like sitting down to eat a steak that proves tough to chew...it required all of my concentration to understand the language and get some enjoyment from the story. The period language was quite well executed, and the story stayed in its time line throughout. But I found that it took some minutes of reading to get my mind in the Elizabethan groove, and when I stopped reading I found myself still thinking in those convoluted terms! As fans of the Forever Knight series, readers may be disappointed at the lack of the familiar story line. But I learned quit a bit about the era, the living conditions and the social conventions of this period in time. There were also important nuggets of information to be gained about the relationship between Nick, LaCroix and Janette. As fans of the Forever Knight concept we should remain open to any and all stories as long as they are related to the characters lives, and the portraits of our favorite Vampires are painted with true colors. Try it. You may find it very enjoyable.
Rating: Summary: What are we without our masks? Review: As some online readers of the series know, "Anne Hathaway-Nayne" is a nom de plume for two writers. As Forever Knight fans ourselves, we felt a tremendous responsibility to remain true to the characters the show had already established, to write a story that would slide seamlessly into the narrative that began with "Dark Knight" and will hopefully continue long past this novel. We wanted other fans of the show to be able to pick up our book and know from the first page that they could trust us--or much better yet, forget about us entirely and lose themselves in a world they already know and love. But as writers, we also wanted to create a world of our own, a story that would stand alone for readers who'd never heard of the show, who were encountering these characters for the first time. We hope we've succeeded in doing both.
So why a flashback novel? Why did we choose a historical setting? One of the underlying themes of Forever Knight that struck a chord with both of us from the beginning was the idea of the vampire as actor, an immortal creature who can and must masquerade as an ordinary man or woman. Shakespeare's Globe and the world around it seemed a natural setting to explore this idea, the best possible stage. All of the book's characters are "players" in every sense, mortals and vampires alike--each one wears several masks. And none is more aware of this pantomime than its protagonist, Nick Knight, known in this time as Nicholas Chevalier. As the story begins, he is already an accomplished player, a master of his many masks. By the end, he has acquired a terrible knowledge of the consequences of his art and the sacrifices it has required of him and will continue to demand forever. By examining his masks, he learns to crave the sight of the creature underneath--an immortal vampire, a killer by nature, who still longs for a human soul.
Incidentally, "Anne Hathaway-Nayne" now has a webpage at the address given above, where we have! posted a map of 1599 London with the main locations in the book indicated on it, and with links to various sites where readers can learn more about Shakespeare's world and such efforts as the recent construction of a plank-for-plank replica of the Globe Theater only a few hundred feet from where the original stood.
Both of us are still in happy shock to have gotten this opportunity in the first place, and we've been leading a charmed life ever since. Thanks to the efforts of our editor, Ginjer Buchanan, and the indulgence of the show's original producers, we were able to write exactly the book we wanted, the book we would want to read. Here's hoping our readers feel the same.
Rating: Summary: A pleasure - Review: Discriminating readers will find the writing, and especially the dialogue, in this book startlingly good and always inventive. Co-authored by two members of Forever Knight's online fan community, the book is lightly peppered with subtle references to FK fan factions and in-jokes. The writing betrays an extremely fine grasp of the main characters' (Nicholas Chevalier/Knight, Lucien LaCroix, Janette DuCharme) individual motivations, as well as developing some minor characters - sexy but rough-cut Conquistador Javier Vachon, his peculiar sidekick Screed (whose dialog alone is worth buying the book for IMO), and the pragmatic ancient Aristotle, who handles matters of vampire secrecy (and will not divulge whether he is "the original of that name"). Fans of the Nick-Janette relationship (Immortal Beloveds) and of Vachon (Vaqueros) will find this book of particular interest. Shakespeare fans as well, whether they have ever seen an episode of Forever Knight or not, should enjoy this. It delves deeply into the flavor of Elizabethan life, and visits all the Bard's haunts. It shouldn't surprise FK fans that Nick, the vampire who knew Joan of Arc, Rasputin, and probably myriad other historical figures, was a close personal friend of Will Shakespeare and very occasional actor. Some of the other reviewers make some astute criticisms, and this book is probably not for everyone. It is too episodic to be a real page-turner in my opinion, and some may find the language, which betrays the authors' very strong grasp of Elizabethan English, difficult to wade through. I highly recommend this book to anyone not intimidated by dialects. It is the product of a close partnership of two talented writers who know their subject matter very well.
Rating: Summary: It was good, but not that good. Review: I am a VERY big fan of Forever Knight, and I have all of the episodes on tape. I have the books, I know the story inside and out, but this book kinda left me snoring. It started out good, but then in kinda went off into la la land. It was good for what it was, but it wasn't all that.
Rating: Summary: I couldn't finish it... Review: I hate to say this, but I really couldn't finish this book. I tried and tried, but it was just so uninteresting to me, I couldn't. Don't get me wrong - I'm a HUGE fan of Forever Knight and watch the series faithfully(okay, obsessively ;)), but this book just didn't appeal to me. I commend the authors for all of their incredible flashback research and all of the hard work they put into it, but in the end, the novel really had no plot. There wasn't as much Vachon/Nick interaction as I wanted, and I felt like it was just night after night after night in London, and no real point to the book than to show Nick was friends with William Shakespeare and he visited the Globe Theatre. That's all great, but.... where's the plot? I am in no way insulting the authors' writing ability, but I think there could have been more of a story within _These Our Revels_ and maybe some suspense and mystery. There was none.
Rating: Summary: Shakespeare buff's & Fan's perspective. Review: I liked the setting of this novel, which I read in my free time during my high school Shakespeare class. I remember Geraint Wyn Davies saying that he wanted to do an episode where Nick was able to interact with Shakespeare so I loved the setting. I really enjoyed reading "These Our Revels" and wish that it was getting better reviews.
Rating: Summary: Forever Vachon :o) Review: I loved Forever Knight. I loved when you brought in the character Vachon Javier. He made the show more humorous and exciting...(but not as good as Nick, though.) I hope there is more to come!!!!! A #1 Forever Knight fan, Belinda
Rating: Summary: Good idea; bad execution Review: I thought it was a great idea to place the Forever Knight characters in the Shakespearean era, and to portray Shakespeare as a character in a Forever Knight story -- interesting combination, I initially thought. However, unless you are an avid Shakespeare fan and truly comfortable reading Shakespeare himself, you may find this book tedious: all dialogue is written in Shakespearean English, and not nearly as well as Shakespeare himself wrote. I should say up front that I find reading Chaucer and Malory in the original middle and late-middle English easier than reading Shakespeare, (this is odd, I admit) and much more enjoyable, so I was immediately at a disadvantage. Nonetheless, the style of the dialogue and narrative would not have been intrusive had there been anything at all interesting in the story to absorb my attention. Nicholas, Janette and LaCroix, and Shakespeare for that matter, all come out flat: I learn nothing new about them, certainly no new insights on their characters. Just as the television series of Forever Knight made the mistake of concentrating too often on the non-Vampire aspects of the characters and the plot, These Our Revels makes the mistake of concentrating too heavily on Shakespeare, his comrades, and Elizabethan society. What there is of the vampires in this book is obsured by such a focus, and also obsured, by the stilted language of the dialogue and narrative, is the plot itself. This was a disappointing book, but die-hard fans of Forever Knight and the Elizabethan period may not be so quick to agree.
Rating: Summary: Absolutely Unreadable Review: I thought Susan Garrett's FK "fan novel" was so poorly plotted and written that I wondered how it ever got published and gave it a "2". But this novel-by-teamwork effort, "These Our Revels", was an unmitigated disaster and despite a serious go at getting through this monotonous, lifeless mess that had so little to do with the FK universe I inhabit daily, in the end I tossed it in the trash (around page 84, I believe). Won't someone--PLEASE!--write another good FK novel as that done by Susan Sizemore in "A Stirring of Dust"? I also highly recommend Nigel Bennett's delightful, engrossing novel,"Keeper of the King."
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