Rating: 
Summary: A delightful Elizabethan fantasy
Review: A young Will Shakespeare is married to Nan and is a father to their baby Susannah. After a day of teaching, Will comes home to his Stratford residence only to find both his beloved females missing. He walks to her cousin's house to fetch Nan when he sees her dancing with a noble in a magical kingdom that cannot exist. He is unable to touch her because she is now in Fairyland.
Will has no hope of ever getting back Nan and his child until he meets Silverdawn in her guise as Lady Silver. She is the rightful heir to the fairy throne since her parents disappeared. However, her older brother Sylvanus has usurped the throne turning her into his supplicant. Silverdawn intends to use Will as an instrument of revenge even though she knows he will probably die for her cause.
ILL MET BY MOONLIGHT is a delightful Elizabethan fantasy that colorfully describes Shakespeare's mundane plane and the realm of fairy. Will is the hero of the tale, yet the novel belongs to Silverdawn, a fairy with heart. Hopefully Shakespeare will have more adventures in the land of the fairy. Harriet Klausner
Rating:
Summary: A Great Fantasy with Shakespeare
Review: I didn't know what to expect from a fantasy with Shakespeare as the main character. But, since I have been a fan of the current trend in fiction which centers around real people, and a lover of Shakespeare, I thought I'd give it a try. I was pleasantly surprised! I found it especially interesting to see how the seeds of many of Shakespeare's greatest plays began during the kidnapping of Shakespeare's wife and child by the "good people" in the fairy kingdom once ruled by King Oberon and Queen Titania. I did not find the quotes from plays to be distracting, I thought Ms Hoyt did an excellent job incorporating them into her story. I thoroughly enjoyed this book, and read it in one sitting...
Rating:
Summary: A Great Fantasy with Shakespeare
Review: I didn't know what to expect from a fantasy with Shakespeare as the main character. But, since I have been a fan of the current trend in fiction which centers around real people, and a lover of Shakespeare, I thought I'd give it a try. I was pleasantly surprised! I found it especially interesting to see how the seeds of many of Shakespeare's greatest plays began during the kidnapping of Shakespeare's wife and child by the "good people" in the fairy kingdom once ruled by King Oberon and Queen Titania. I did not find the quotes from plays to be distracting, I thought Ms Hoyt did an excellent job incorporating them into her story. I thoroughly enjoyed this book, and read it in one sitting...
Rating: 
Summary: A tale signifying nothing...
Review: I had high hopes for this book; the title, the cover, the idea of reworking William Shakespeare's life - all appealed to me. The story is meant to be a creative retelling of Shakespeare's life, the first in a series. It begins with Shakespeare as a young newly married man. His wife, Nan (a variation on Anne Hathaway) and his young daughter, Susannah, are stolen away by the King of the elves who plans on making Nan his wife. The premise of this book is - I believe - that Will's resulting adventures and interactions with the eleves became his inspiration for his later writing. Now the unfortunate part: The writing of this book is frankly, well, just plain bad. Try as you might, you cannot become very attached to the characters. There is not enough deail and intricacy in the plot. Every thing seems very cliche. And it IS very cliche because Hoyt steals a lot of her plot from Romeo & Juliet, Hamlet, MacBeth, and of course, A Midsummer Night's Dream. Not only does she snatch ideas from these plays, she shamelessly pilfers exact dialogue. Perhaps she thought that putting Shakespeare's dialogue into the mouths of her characters would enhance the novel. But it does not; it fact it irks and distracts and suggests that she is unable to provide her own wording. This incorporation of Shakespeare's lines into the novel was the number one reason that the book failed to be enjoyable (for me). At the most dramatic moments in the novel, you are pulled away from the scene because of the dialogue: "A plague. A plague on both your houses! Your houses, remember. You are both cursed." It could be that I've heard the lines so many times before in context, that they failed to impress me when I read them in Ill Met By Moonlight. Instead, I grew annoyed with an author who evidently could not come up with her own original dialogue. This is a very romaticized and melodramatic book. Like I said, the melodrama might work if one could feel some attachment to the characters. But for the most part, that's not possible. Just as you're liking a character, the most awful dialogue comes out of their mouth and spoils it all. Will is not at all how I would imagine a young Shakespeare to be. There is not even a hint of genius present in him. So, in conclusion, I'm disappointed with the novel. I'd hoped it would be more like a book I'd read when I was younger, A Cue for Treason (by Geoffery Trease). I would suggest that book in place of this one for those of you who don't mind young-adult books. True, its less fanciful but the story is fun, interesting, and suspenseful. It does not mangle Shakespeare like this book does and it is truer to life. My last complaint is that Ill Met By Moonlight is only the first book of a series. If I'd known that I would not have bought it. I definitely will not purchase the next book. Fortunately, the conclusion of Ill Met By Moonlight is such that you do not feel you MUST go out and find out what happens next. Believe me, you probably won't even care. ;o)
Rating:
Summary: A tale signifying nothing...
Review: I had high hopes for this book; the title, the cover, the idea of reworking William Shakespeare's life - all appealed to me. The story is meant to be a creative retelling of Shakespeare's life, the first in a series. It begins with Shakespeare as a young newly married man. His wife, Nan (a variation on Anne Hathaway) and his young daughter, Susannah, are stolen away by the King of the elves who plans on making Nan his wife. The premise of this book is - I believe - that Will's resulting adventures and interactions with the eleves became his inspiration for his later writing. Now the unfortunate part: The writing of this book is frankly, well, just plain bad. Try as you might, you cannot become very attached to the characters. There is not enough deail and intricacy in the plot. Every thing seems very cliche. And it IS very cliche because Hoyt steals a lot of her plot from Romeo & Juliet, Hamlet, MacBeth, and of course, A Midsummer Night's Dream. Not only does she snatch ideas from these plays, she shamelessly pilfers exact dialogue. Perhaps she thought that putting Shakespeare's dialogue into the mouths of her characters would enhance the novel. But it does not; it fact it irks and distracts and suggests that she is unable to provide her own wording. This incorporation of Shakespeare's lines into the novel was the number one reason that the book failed to be enjoyable (for me). At the most dramatic moments in the novel, you are pulled away from the scene because of the dialogue: "A plague. A plague on both your houses! Your houses, remember. You are both cursed." It could be that I've heard the lines so many times before in context, that they failed to impress me when I read them in Ill Met By Moonlight. Instead, I grew annoyed with an author who evidently could not come up with her own original dialogue. This is a very romaticized and melodramatic book. Like I said, the melodrama might work if one could feel some attachment to the characters. But for the most part, that's not possible. Just as you're liking a character, the most awful dialogue comes out of their mouth and spoils it all. Will is not at all how I would imagine a young Shakespeare to be. There is not even a hint of genius present in him. So, in conclusion, I'm disappointed with the novel. I'd hoped it would be more like a book I'd read when I was younger, A Cue for Treason (by Geoffery Trease). I would suggest that book in place of this one for those of you who don't mind young-adult books. True, its less fanciful but the story is fun, interesting, and suspenseful. It does not mangle Shakespeare like this book does and it is truer to life. My last complaint is that Ill Met By Moonlight is only the first book of a series. If I'd known that I would not have bought it. I definitely will not purchase the next book. Fortunately, the conclusion of Ill Met By Moonlight is such that you do not feel you MUST go out and find out what happens next. Believe me, you probably won't even care. ;o)
Rating:
Summary: WOW!! Ms. Hoyt writes a Great Book!!!!
Review: Ill Met By Moonlight is a fascinating read. From the first chapter, I felt like I'd stepped right into Shakespeare's England. And then I met the elf -- this book kept getting better and better. I usually read while I walk on the treadmill and I found that I had gone 20 minutes past my normal walking time because I was so engrossed in this story. This is the best book I've read in a long time. I think I'll by all my relatives copies for Christmas.
Rating:
Summary: An Original and Wonderful Entertainment
Review: Ill Met by Moonlight is unique among the few works of fiction that use William Shakespeare as a character. The trouble with most of those novels and films is their lack of daring. The precious few facts we know about the man are treated with such reverence that the author hardly dares to make the most believable addition. Maybe Will played detective and investigated Kit Marlowe's death? Maybe a girl sneaked in to play a girl's part? Maybe the Queen herself dropped by to catch a performance? They amuse us by timidly stepping a toe into the great unknown sea of Shakespeare's personal history.
Sarah Hoyt's Ill Met by Moonlight, on the other hand, is fired by an imagination and daring worthy of the playwright. The premise is simple and grand: what if Shakespeare based A Midsummer Night's Dream on his own encounters with the world of Faerie? And this is not the fairyland of Victorian children's stories that young Will falls into, rather it is the dark ethereal realm our ancestors thought they shared their world with. Kirk's Secret Commonwealth, inhabited by Tam Lin and Allingham's Fairies, in which a man who joins the dance in the fairy circle, may wake up the next day to find twenty years have passed in the world he knew.
Will's wife Nan and young daughter Susannah are spirited away to a crystal palace that appears in an enchanted wood, and Will, going to their rescue, finds himself enmeshed in the political affairs of nearly immortal creatures who, for all their great powers, are as succeptible as mortals to lust and greed and rage and the will to power. And is seduced by the impossibly beautiful Lady Silver.
Ill Met by Moonlight is an original and truly wonderful entertainment.
Rating: 
Summary: NOVEL PREMISE, MILDLY INTERESTING
Review: It is a bold endeavor using the best-known figure in English literature as your main foil in a light hearted fantasy concerning men and fairies. Ms. Hoyt has taken William Shakespeare as a very young newlywed and enveloped him in a plot that has the usurper fairy king kidnapping his wife and child, first as a wet nurse and then maybe as a wife. Coming to his unlikely aid is the rightful king, who just happens to be able to change from male to female, and in a tale of mismatched love and lust plots to retrieve Will's wife Nan. An interesting premise and actually not a bad little story. Some may be put off by the use of such a famous persona in such a light fantasy but as it happens I'm not one of them. I'd be willing to bet the old Bard wouldn't care all that much either, anything for a good story I'm sure. The biggest problem I had with the whole thing is the rationalization of why Will's wife Nan was picked by the usurper Sylvanus to be his wife. She was a self admitted `old maid' and a bit of a shrew who married a much younger William out of, oh I don't know, desperation? Certainly if she were a raving beauty she would have been snapped up long before Will came along, regardless of any possible personality flaws. So why did a centuries old fairy, with all the beauty and power of his enchanted position precipitate his own ruin by kidnapping this rather ordinary human woman? Beats me, I can't figure it out. To be honest it is easier to accept the existence of fairies than this plot twist. I will say one thing of Ms. Hoyt, she certainly knows Shakespeare's works, at least the more well know ones anyway. Inter-dispersed with almost every spoken line is a hint, and sometimes a bit more than a hint, of some famous quote from one of the Bards plays. It's actually interesting trying to place some of the more paraphrased ones with their original. As a romance it's only fair and as a fantasy it's good. All in all I would RECOMMEND it. It garnered just enough interest from me to proceed onto the next one, from there we will see.
Rating:
Summary: NOVEL PREMISE, MILDLY INTERESTING
Review: It is a bold endeavor using the best-known figure in English literature as your main foil in a light hearted fantasy concerning men and fairies. Ms. Hoyt has taken William Shakespeare as a very young newlywed and enveloped him in a plot that has the usurper fairy king kidnapping his wife and child, first as a wet nurse and then maybe as a wife. Coming to his unlikely aid is the rightful king, who just happens to be able to change from male to female, and in a tale of mismatched love and lust plots to retrieve Will's wife Nan. An interesting premise and actually not a bad little story. Some may be put off by the use of such a famous persona in such a light fantasy but as it happens I'm not one of them. I'd be willing to bet the old Bard wouldn't care all that much either, anything for a good story I'm sure. The biggest problem I had with the whole thing is the rationalization of why Will's wife Nan was picked by the usurper Sylvanus to be his wife. She was a self admitted 'old maid' and a bit of a shrew who married a much younger William out of, oh I don't know, desperation? Certainly if she were a raving beauty she would have been snapped up long before Will came along, regardless of any possible personality flaws. So why did a centuries old fairy, with all the beauty and power of his enchanted position precipitate his own ruin by kidnapping this rather ordinary human woman? Beats me, I can't figure it out. To be honest it is easier to accept the existence of fairies than this plot twist. I will say one thing of Ms. Hoyt, she certainly knows Shakespeare's works, at least the more well know ones anyway. Inter-dispersed with almost every spoken line is a hint, and sometimes a bit more than a hint, of some famous quote from one of the Bards plays. It's actually interesting trying to place some of the more paraphrased ones with their original. As a romance it's only fair and as a fantasy it's good. All in all I would RECOMMEND it. It garnered just enough interest from me to proceed onto the next one, from there we will see.
Rating:
Summary: An Instant Classic!
Review: It's easy to see why this was one of the featured books ... Hoyt's obviously well-researched debut drops you into Will Shakespeare's world so convincingly that you'll swear she talked to the Bard personally before penning this tale. Under Hoyt's deft hand (and an impressive knowledge of Elizabethan language that she's modified just enough for us 21st-century English speakers to understand without translation, yet retains the feel of the period), a seemingly straightforward plots turns deliciously labyrinthine enough to make the Bard smile with delight. Using the style of the play Romeo and Juliet, Hoyt's mysterious narrator starts the recipe, setting the scene before us while trying to staunch a bleeding eye (I believe this is a literary reference, which, if I understand correctly from Hoyt's website, she'll realize more fully in the sequel to this book), then Hoyt adds to each scene a short playbook narrative before getting into the action. (BTW, I found excerpt chapters of this book on her web site, sarahahoyt.com) She mixes in a plot using characters and the fairy world derived from A Midsummer Night's Dream, then ices the confection with fairy court intrigues and personalities that mirror the Elizabethan court in the real world. Shakespeare himself participates in the fun, getting romantically involved with a Dark Lady fairy who oscillates at will between her female aspect and that of a Fair Boy, Quicksilver, who befriends Will (platonically, of course) even as he embroils Will in a plot to gain the fairy throne from his usurping brother. I love Shakespeare, and I was delighted to find numerous quotes from his plays peppering Hoyt's book. I even found quite a few that I _thought_ were Shakespeare, but didn't show up in my searchable Shakespeare database. This is one of the best books I've read in years, destined to be a classic both well-loved by readers and included in literature classes for years to come, but I hesitate to compare it to other classics in the field (and out of it), because Hoyt's work reads with such an original voice. I got the strong impression reading this book that I'd just witnessed the birth of one of the great writers of the 21st century. (Other recommendations: Bridge of Birds +sequels, Barry Hughart; Roman Blood +sequels, Steven Saylor; Doomsday Book, To Say Nothing of the Dog, Lincoln's Dreams, Connie Willis; Lord Meren books, Lynda Robinson; Fire & Hemlock, Diana Wynne Jones; Small Gods, Terry Pratchett)
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