I very much enjoyed this book. I'm not always a fan of revenge stories but the miserable part of the story isn't dwelled on over much, the bulk focusing on the main character's new agenda.

I'm the sort of reader that likes "brain candy," things like allusions or references to other works, literary devices, etc. This book has plenty, being a retelling of Shakespeare's the Tempest both within the book and as the book. I highly recommend it if you also like that sort of thing. ( )

"Hag-Seed" was my first foray into the Hogarth Shakesepeare series, but hardly my first encounter with Margaret Atwood, whose novels and poetry I enjoy. I am not the most loyal fan of Shakespeare's works, but this reimagining of "The Tempest" was quite clever, on the one hand, but, on the other, it not capture my undivided attention so I did not feel compelled to pick it up in every spare moment as I ordinarily do when reading a good book. I will chalk it up to the temporal demands of the holidays and hope that I fare better with other books in the series. ( )

This retelling of The Tempest has a brilliant central conceit—an outcast theater director revenges himself not with a tempest, but with The Tempest. The story that follows provides an interesting close reading of Shakespeare's play, but as a novel it failed to coalesce for me.

Atwood is writing a wacky satire, so implausible plotting and static characters can be forgiven, but the storytelling felt flat. Maybe the constraint of the Hogarth Shakespeare series, with its requirement to stick somewhat closely to the source material, was the problem here. There were good moments, and I always enjoy reading Atwood's clever, accessible prose, but the whole didn't leave much of an impression. ( )

Margaret Atwood does a great job of recasting The Tempest as both a revenge novel and as a play within a play where the revenge is enacted. Very effective, but, like The Tempest itself, hard to summarize. ( )

Really fun and enjoyable retelling of The Tempest. Atwood came up with the perfect premise of an ousted director winding up putting on a performance of The Tempest within a prison. All very post-modern and self-referential. It was clear Atwood was having a great time - she tells of the director getting the inmate/actors to analyse the text, inviting us to analyse hers in the same manner. She does a good job of paralleling The Tempest's plot, though that does make for some slightly overly-extended suspension of disbelief here and there — but she gets away with it, given the constraints in which she's working. One minor complaint is that the denouement lacks a little tension, but, still, for anyone who has any fondness for Shakespeare's play, this is very highly recommended. 4.5/5. ( )