Synopses & Reviews
To Be or Not To Be is a choose-your-own-path version of
Hamlet by
New York Times best-selling author Ryan North. Play as Hamlet, Ophelia, or King Hamletand#151;if you want to die on the first page and play as a ghost. It's pretty awesome! Readers can follow Yorick skull markers to stick closely to Shakespeare's plot, or go off-script and explore alternative possibilities filled with puzzles and humor.
Each ending in the book is accompanied by a full-color, full-page illustration by one of the 65 most excellent artists working today, so each rereading yields new surprises and rewards. Ryan's prose is, as always, colloquial and familiar but full of clever references, vivid imagination, and only the most choice of jokes. Inventive devices like a book-within-a-book (to mirror Hamlet's play-within-a-play) take full advantage of the gamebook medium and liven up the original story for even the most disinterested of Shakespeare readers!
To Be or Not to Be became a sensation when it launched: over 15,000 people backed the book in just one month, and it remains the number-one most funded publishing project ever on Kickstarter.com.
To be, or not to be: that is the adventure!
Review
"The Bard would not protest too much, wethinks." and#151; CBC
Synopsis
To Be or Not To Be is a gamebook retelling of
Hamlet by
New York Times best-selling author Ryan North. The reader can play as Hamlet, Ophelia, or King Hamlet, sticking closely to the Shakespeare's plot or exploring alternative possibilities that are filled with puzzles, humor, and surreal conclusions. Each ending in the book is accompanied by a full-color, full-page illustration by 65 different artists, so each rereading yields new surprises and rewards. Author Ryan North's prose is, as always, colloquial and familiar but full of clever references, vivid imagination, and his unique style of humor. Clever devices like a gamebook-within-a-gamebook (to mirror Hamlet's play-within-a-play) take full advantage of the gamebook medium and livens up the original story for even the most disinterested Shakespeare readers.
The crowdfunding campaign for To Be or Not to Be generated over $580,000 from over 15,000 backers in just a month. The book is still the number-one most funded project in the Publishing category on Kickstarter.com.
Synopsis
William Shakespeareand#8217;s Hamlet has finally been restored to its original second-person non-linear branching narrative format. I know! What took so long, am I right?
Now itand#8217;s up to YOU to decide what happens next. Play as Hamlet and revenge your fatherand#8217;s death. Play as Ophelia and make scientific discoveries. Play as King Hamlet, Sr. and die on the first page!
This deluxe edition features insanely beautiful illustrations for every ending, a book-within-a-book, and lots of ways to stab dudes.
To be or not to be: that is the adventure!
About the Author
Ryan North is the writer behind the super-funny webcomic Dinosaur Comics, the critically acclaimed and Eisner-nominated Adventure Timecomic, and the coeditor of insanely popular self-published Machine of Death, which became Amazon.com's number-one best-selling book on the day it launched.and#160;A sequel, This Is How You Die, will be released in July 2013 from Grand Central Publishing. North lives in Toronto.