2.5 Stars ( )

This book is not advertised as a book for young people but the language and situation are far too simplistic for an adult reader. Give it to your young nephews and nieces.

I received a review copy of "Banquo's Son: A Crown of Blood and Honour Book #1" by T.K. Roxborogh (AmazonCrossing) through NetGalley.com. ( )

Fantastic novel with everything... betrayal, death, love, injustice, war. Beautifully written and captivating. Tania Roxborogh, the author, has posed the question 'What happened after Macbeth?'. She had been almost possessed by this quest of her own and the result is this wonderful 'can't put it down' novel suitable for teens and adult, male and female. I should have given it 5 stars!!! ( )

The idea is full of potential: to take the Shakespearean hints of the importance of Fleance (I am biased - having as a 13 year old played Fleance I have always argued he is the central character of Macbeth!) and develop an historical narrative. Perhaps alarm (alarum?) bells should have been ringing when I read the editorial hook-line on the cover: 'how do you choose between love and honour?' trumpets the publisher. Here is to be a narrative of Shakespearean weight, plumbing the depths of the human psyche and existential meaning.

Roxborogh offers her own words of introduction: ' I have done what Shakespeare often did: take a real story and people from history and asked "I wonder what would happen if...?"' Fleance, who makes two entrances and has two lines in Macbeth, offers fertile ground for such a task. He provides a ready narrative, a whakapapa (as it would be called in Roxborogh's New Zealand, a blood-story) with beginnings established and open endings: 'thou shalt get kings though thou be none', as the witches tell Banquo (Macbeth I:iii:68). What is their tale, left unwritten by the Baird? And so rich a history in the politics and intrigue of those warlike, hot-blooded northern Celts!

Yet there it ends. Fleance opens Roxborogh's narrative by stalking a stag, but the stag escapes when Fleance's (often and uneasily rendered "Flea's" in Roxborogh's attempt to craft an adoptive family's easy familiarity) adoptive sister Keavy in turn stalks Fleance. The stag escapes, but so, unfortunately, does any glimpse into the psyche of its would-be attacker. Fleance, obviously the central character, remains as wooden as his cross-bow. He falls in love with Rosie, but in the end the editorially-flagged tussle 'between love and honour' is no-contest. Honour wins: the princess Rachel takes the bruised and battered Fleance's hand into Scottish history while Rosie, his true love, presumably goes on to pull dark beers from behind the counter of her lowlands pub.

And that's about it, really. I mean ... there are encounters with witches, as there would be, and they make prophesies, as they would, to Donalbain, the descendant of Macbeth's victim Duncan (see Macbeth I:ii:62-64). Donalbain, who has returned from Ireland (Macbeth II:iii:140-143) has proved as vulnerable to the hags' incantations as his kinsman Macbeth, and is a somewhat ambivalent King of Scotland after the death of his ineffectual but perhaps-loved (and childless) brother Malcolm III. Fortunately, while attempting to murder Fleance, Donalbain falls over, impales himself, and conveniently dies, so Fleance's cousin Duncan can, to great rejoicing, assume the throne.

Fleance, fortunately, fatefully, had bumped into Duncan some time earlier. Banquo, even in Macbeth, has a habit of turning up at dinner parties and elsewhere, and provides the same service for his son. Along with bad dreams, his appearances inspire Fleance to undertake a quest, and he bumps into the unhorsed Duncan. Banquo doesn't seem to achieve much else, beyond looking inexplicably grumpy until at last the witches' kingly sooth-saying is fulfilled. Then, it is to be assumed, he settles down at last to sleep.

By then, though, Fleance has killed lots of wolves, miscreant knaves, feral thanes, hapless soldiers and various other inconveniences. Some seem slightly surprised to find Banquo's long-lost son re-appear, some recognize him, some don't. The witches of course don't, but they wouldn't. Fleance has saved Duncan's life, so it is all but inevitable that Duncan will one day die saving his. He has fallen in reciprocated semi-love with Duncan's sister Rachel, his true love Rosie eventually waves heartbroken hands ('the way of truth love is never smooth', intones Fleance languidly on page 162) and sets him free. Scotland is saved. Adoptive sister Keavy and Fleance's eventual sister in law Bree, an ADHD younger princess who is Duncan and Rachel's younger sister, meet briefly and instantly become as good a pair of friends as cardboard cutouts ever can be - for a paragraph or so. Bree seems otherwise to serve no purpose in the narrative. But nor does Keavy, unless it is to frighten away the stag in the opening scene. All - except of course Duncan - live happily ever after. MacDuff, by now surely an old man, wields a sword with the dexterity of an Olympic champion, but is eventually bumped on the head by a mace-wielding miscreant thug who had previously failed to kill Fleance. MacDuff is murdered from behind after mortal combat with Fleance's anglophile foster father, Keavy's 'Da' (is this what people called their fathers in the eleventh or any century?)'. Another bit player, Calum, adviser to the king, turns out to be the son of the king of Norway, but his duplicity is as predictable as his royal heritage is peripheral to the plot.

Roxborogh has missed a great opportunity. Wooden characters lead wooden lives, woodenly interact and die or live. Love interests come and go, without even the opportunity to speak of Michelangelo. Even Willow the horse, perhaps the most interesting character, eventually slides out of the narrative with all the ephemerality of a will o the wisp, leaving a younger horse to fight Fleance's battles.

The plot is thin, the characterization is barely existent; overloaded sentences with incomplete or ineffective sub-clauses, often with seemingly random punctuation, detract from any narrative pleasure. There was so much potential in this concept: Roxborogh's editors should never have let her miss it so avowedly. Perhaps the stag's escape was a warning. ( )