The Song Behind Today’s Review Title

Two books again this week, and once again having two completely different subjects. It took a bit of googling and poking around to come up with a song lyric that captured something about both books.

The title today is a line from the song One Love by Bob Marley. It was first recorded by Bob Marley and the Wailers in 1965 as a ska tune on their debut album. But the version most people are familiar with is the reggae version that Marley reworked for the release in 1977 of Exodus, the album that propelled him to international fame. For legal reasons that version was titled One Love / People Get Ready because Marley had incorporated sections (today we’d call it sampling) of the 1965 song People Get Ready by the group the Impressions. Curtis Mayfield, writer of the Impressions song, was credited as co-writer of the 1977 version.

Marley’s song focuses on unity - “one love, one heart, let’s get together…” and that is also the key message of the sci-fi fantasy novel The Many.

Today’s second book focuses on the writing of Shakespeare — his plays have united generations of theatergoers. Each year translations of his plays are performed to audiences across the globe, making Shakespeare the playwright who has reached more audiences than any other.

You can hear the 1977 version of One Love in the official music video (released along with the 1984 compilation album Legend) here on YouTube (look closely - you may recognize some of the cameos by 80s music artists).

Canadian Sylvain Neuvel is the author of six previous science fiction novels, which make up two fantastic trilogies. I’ve read those six and thought they were very well done. The Many is the first that is a standalone story, with a very clear beginning, middle and end.

I had a bit of a rough start with this book. It’s set in the town of Marquette, Michigan, just a two-hour drive from my home. But it’s peopled with many characters who are not folks I’d expect to encounter on a visit to Marquette, which was a bit off putting. They include a homeless neo-Nazi prone to daily shoplifting at the local Target store. In fact, most of the characters are introduced with an emphasis on their bad points, or weaknesses - they drink too much, they have very little self-confidence, they struggle to be good parents, they never loved their wives, they rob stores regularly, they are psycho cops, etc.

It took me until about a third to halfway into the book to realize that Neuvel was giving us these superficial, stereotypical characters for a reason. And that reason is that this is a parable. It’s a book with a simple message, and it needs paper tigers to set up that message. And carries the book for me isn’t its characters, but its sly humor.

At least in my reading, Neuvel knows that he’s set up paper tigers in service of his message. But I think he’s attempting his own equivalent of something like The Grinch - a ready-for-TV parable with a simple premise and enough oddity and humor to it so that it might last. It’s a gamble for the author, but if you, the reader, think of the book in that way then it makes much more sense. Once that lightbulb went off for me, I found it a real pleasure to read. In fact, I finished it in one day.

This is a simple, quick read with a quirky sense of humor and a good message. Don’t read it expecting a realistic peak into small town America. Read it for its humor, its message, and its lone, rather weird alien. For sci-fi / fantasy fans this would be a good beach read this summer.

RATING: Three Stars ⭐⭐⭐

OVERALL COMMENTS: An uneven sci-fi standalone story with a stronger finish than start. The book has a quirky sense of humor and a ready-for-TV sensibility that make it a fun read.

WHERE I GOT MY COPY: I received an advance reviewer’s copy of the ebook through NetGalley, and courtesy of the publisher Rebellion Publishing. The book is available to the public starting today, April 21, 2026.

How does Shakespeare remain Shakespeare when every word has changed? That is the question this book sets out to answer. And it does so. In depth, and with a sense of humor.

The humor is appreciated, as is the way the book is organized. Each chapter takes on a different question about translation. One chapter deals with rhyming for example - how do you convey Shakespeare’s rhymes when the words you would translate to don’t rhyme? For that matter, how do you handle the iambic pentameter Shakespeare uses, a poetic structure unique to English that audiences who speak other languages won’t be familiar with?

And how does a translator deal with gendered languages like Spanish, or languages that have more specific words than English for relationships, like uncles (of which there are many in Shakespeare’s plays).

For lovers of the English language there is a lot to like in Hahn’s book, as it highlights some of the idiosyncrasies of our native tongue as viewed through translation to other languages, revealing things about English we wouldn't normally think of.

If the book were more tightly paced it would have worked better for me. I do not come from a world of literary figures or have depth of knowledge on Shakespeare’s plays. Those who do will appreciate Hahn’s stories interspersed with the discussions of translation, stories that I struggled with.

I felt that I’d bit off more than I could chew with this book. When I hit the chapter on “Latinate vocabulary” I was way outside my comfort zone, and I confess I began to skim.

So, sorry to say, it’s a tepid review summary from me — Read it if you have a love of the English language, a literary bent, and a working knowledge of Shakespeare’s plays. In that case, I think you’ll appreciate the author’s humor and stories more than I.

RATING: Two and a Half Stars ⭐⭐🌠

OVERALL COMMENTS: A translator takes us through the challenge of Shakespeare, with humor and in depth. Appreciated the humor but the water got too deep for me.

WHERE I GOT MY COPY: I received an advance reviewer’s copy of the ebook through NetGalley, and courtesy of the publisher Knopf. The book is available to the public starting today, April 21, 2026.

The other books on my nightstand over the last week:

NO OTHER BOOKS READ

Honestly, fitting the two featured books into this one week was enough.

TWO BOOKS I’M CURRENTLY READING

Nothing new to report here. The American Revolution and the Fate of the World by Richard Bell is still sitting on my nightstand waiting to be picked back up, and I haven’t yet plucked that sci-fi novella that I talked about last week off of my To Be Read list (Twice-Spent Comet by Ziggy Schutz).

WHAT’S NEXT

Next week I review The Madness Pill, a history of the search for a drug to address schizophrenia and other mental disorders.