Those who've read or seen the play, though, may appreciate a look behind the battlements that's spiced up with young love, teen espionage, and dramatic chapter endings.
Invented subplots fail to sustain the same level of interest or credibility as the main story: the servant girl's personal tale of unmarried childbirth is buried amid events the literal demonization of the character of Seyton is superfluous since Fleance's failure to kill Lady Mary's fiancé wasn't the result of his kindness or nobility but his simple ineptness in battle, her forgiveness seems capricious at best. Readers will really need familiarity with the play to understand the novel, however, and Lady Mary is implausible in her presence at multiple key plot turns. Cooney is clearly familiar with the play, to the point of offering an explanation for the mystery of Banquo's third murderer, and she takes an interesting tack in focusing on the powerless in the castle, with particular attention given to a young woman in the servants' hall and to Banquo's son, Fleance (who is falsely reputed to have killed Lady Mary's betrothed). When her father is executed for rebellion against the King of Scotland and his title given to Macbeth, Mary's position becomes tenuous, and she becomes increasingly aware, as the Macbeths ascend to glory, that something is rotten in the state of Scotland.
This prose revision focuses on fourteen-year-old Lady Mary, boarding at the Macbeths' castle in preparation for marriage to the squire of her father, the Thane of Cawdor.
Veteran author Cooney is mostly known for her contemporarily set works, but here she turns to fictionalized history, retelling the story of Shakespeare's Macbeth.
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