KALIVAS! Or, Another Tempest, well-thought-through retelling

KALIVAS! Or, Another Tempest
NICK MAMATAS
CLASH Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$9.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4.25* of five

The Publisher Says: In this science-fiction revision of Shakespeare’s The Tempest, Kalivas lives in solitude on the Farallon Islands, until the Master and his daughter M colonize his lonely realm.

Kalivas, the last free-range human, is pressed into completing dangerous and menial tasks on the Master's behalf. The new regime is disrupted when a great storm brings more cyborg mainlanders to the island shores. Can Kalivas finally break free and reclaim his islands, or will his affection for M keep him tied to the Master forever?

Kalivas! Or, Another Tempest reframes the drama as an anticolonial fantasia through futuristic gizmos, a broken continent, and a one-act play invoking the theater of the absurd. Told by the Bard's least civilized and most human creation, Nick Mamatas crafts a micro-epic for the modern era.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: I love this description: "Nick Mamatas crafts a micro-epic for the modern era."

Exactly. This precisely delineates this reading experience. Caliban, from Shakespeare's version of The Tempest, starts us (as Kalivas) in the direction Author Mamatas wants us to go. He is, need I mention, not-quite human; he is Us-but-Other. Kalivas is the last fully human representative of our lineage after Apocalypse compels most to seek non-human augmentation. The Master (Prospero) has a "posthuman" as they're now called child, M (Miranda), with whom Kalivas is infatuated.

So, M is repelled but fascinated by Kalivas? So The Master is umitigatedly cruel to Kalivas? But who plays Stephano's part?

Y'all know better than that. The squalling hordes of banshees in the Spoiler Stasi make it impossible for me to tell. I can say that the nature of The Tempest is strongly present in this anticolonial reimagining, I will say that there is a lot more examination of the ways and means of Othering, I'd like you to know that the most common downfall of the retelling...losing sight of the central reason to retell a story in the joy of creating one's own...is entirely absent. As Kalivas hits the beats, the camera of our readerly attention is a few feet off its original mark; we see from a new perspective the way the stories meet, merge, diverge, and if one's paying attention, the why of it all.