Acquired Book By: I started hosting for Rachel’s Random Resources at the end of [2017] booking several guest features for [2018] whilst noting I had a lovely opportunity to review a novel for one of the New Year’s tours. This blog tour marks my second with this touring company, as Rachel and I met through my chat #ChocLitSaturday which has since been renewed @SatBookChat! I look forward to spotlighting her authors, conversing with them and seeing how they respond to my guest topics. I may review a book here or there, but as most of her authors are in the UK / Europe market, I mostly was excited to cheer for their stories whilst awaiting to gather their stories stateside in print or audio.
I received a complimentary copy of “The Invisible Hand” direct from the author James Hartley in exchange for an honest review. I also received a complimentary copy of the audiobook “Heart of Winter” in exchange for an honest review not connected with this blog tour but for a secondary showcase forthcoming on Jorie Loves A Story. I added thoughts and reflections on behalf of the prequel “Heart of Winter” for my own edification and as it ran concurrent to my primary focus of featuring “The Invisible Hand” for this blog tour. For my own insight and understanding, I listened to the public domain version of ‘Macbeth’ via LibriVox (on their website) which features audiobooks of Classical Literature (see also Page). I did not receive compensation for my opinions or thoughts shared herein.
Why I was excited to be reading this series:
I couldn’t agree with you more – as atmospheric elemental components are what I personally feel attracted to myself whenever I am seeking a particularly compelling story to read set in the Gothic style or a certain sub-niche of Historical Fiction. Classical re-tellings, psychological suspense, Cosy Horror or a few other areas where writers can bend genre to their own will of imagination whilst evoking such a strong presence of how atmospheric under-threads of narrative tone can not only set a reader straight into the story’s setting itself but it can become evocative of the textural edges of how the writer envisioned his or her story to be read and seen.
Yes, I concur – one of the joys of reading Shakespeare is seeking the ‘questions’ he’s asking of us as we read. If we’re intuitive readers we’ll notice how he’s left a lot of doors open for interpreting his motives whilst he also paints strong clues towards where his own mind and heart were directing his own literary muse to tread. The joy for me (of course) is sorting it all out – whilst being caught up inside the ‘ways in which’ he chose to write his stories. He had a unique grasp of how a story could be constructed but it’s how he layered it all – how he fused the craft from what had come before and re-shaped it to be seen through the execution of plays and sonnets.
I think this is actually the beauty of what you’ve set out to achieve – an after canon focus on the stories themselves but without a direct adaptation of the ‘story’ as it once was envisioned but rather, to take those elements out of context and re-alight them in a new thread of enlightenment for younger readers who are drawn towards those elements by Shakespeare but perhaps, would rather have a taste of them in a different construction of story altogether. It is also a lovely bridge for the hesitations younger readers might feel in attempting to dig directly in Shakespeare. I know not all readers find challenges in literature as enjoyable as I once did myself or rather, as I continue to find as can we ever really say we’re done challenging our literary inclinations? I think not!
-quoted from the Guest Post I hosted on behalf of this blog tour to learn the *inspiration* behind this story & how Mr Hartley has found writerly joy in re-inventing how to fuse Shakespearean elements into a newly invented world for younger readers who might not have graduated into the original canon.
The Invisible Hand
Subtitle: Shakespeare's Moon : Act 1
by James Hartley
Source: Author via Rachel's Random Resources, Librivox | Public Domain Audiobooks
Narrator: James Hartley
The Invisible Hand is about a boy, Sam, who has just started life at a boarding school and finds himself able to travel back in time to medieval Scotland. There he meets a girl, Leana, who can travel to the future, and the two of them become wrapped up in events in Macbeth, the Shakespeare play, and in the daily life of the school.
The book is the first part of a series called Shakespeare´s Moon. Each book is set in the same boarding school but focuses on a different Shakespeare play.
Places to find the book:
ISBN: 9781785354984
Also by this author: The Invisible Hand
Published by Lodestone Books
on 27th February, 2017
Format: Audiobook | mp3, Librivox | Public Domain Audiobooks, Trade Paperback
Pages: 168
Published By: Lodestone Books (@JHPChildren)
an imprint of John Hunt Publishing (@JHPFiction)
The series thus far along :
Hartley’s Shakespearean 5 act Quintet (after canon) series ‘Shakespeare’s Moon’
Heart of Winter | prequel to ‘The Invisible Hand’ (Synopsis) → previously an audiobook
The Invisible Hand | inspired by ‘MacBeth’
PlayFight | a short story within the series | Read via Wattpad
Cold Fire | inspired by ‘Romeo & Juliet’ (Synopsis) → #PubDay is 31.Aug.18
Converse via: #Shakespeare #Macbeth & #theclassicsclub
Find out why Mr Hartley claims to have been ‘betwitched’
by the muse behind ‘An Invisible Hand’ + ‘Heart of Winter’.
About James Hartley
James was born on the Wirral, England, in 1973 on a rainy Thursday. He shares his birthday with Bono, Sid Vicious and two even nastier pieces of work, John Wilkes Booth and Mark David Chapman.
His mother was a hairdresser with her own business and his father worked in a local refinery which pours filth into the sky over the Mersey to this day. They married young and James was their first child. He has two younger brothers and a still-expanding family in the area. As an Everton fan he suffered years of Liverpool success throughout the seventies and was thrilled when his father took a job in Singapore and the family moved lock, stock and two smoking barrels to Asia.
He spent five fine years growing up in the city state before returning to the rain, storms, comprehensive schools and desolate beauty of the Scottish east coast. Later years took he and his family to baking hot Muscat, in Oman, and a Syria that has since been bombed off the surface of the planet.
James studied journalism in London and later travelled through Ireland, France, Germany and India generally having a good time, before finally settling in Madrid, Spain, where he now lives with his wife and two children.
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