#4 rating

As I Descended by Robin Talley

Published: 6th September 2016

Read: May 2018

POV: Third person

Target age: 16+

Genre: Horror, Young Adult, Shakespeare retelling

LGBTQ+ characters: The two leads: Maria and Lily; as well as Maria’s best friend, Brandon, and Brandon’s boyfriend, Mateo.

Lily, Brandon and Mateo are all gay. Maria is bisexual.

Personal rating: 4/5

Favourite character: Lily, if I had to name one.

As I Descended is a modern Sapphic retelling of Shakespeare’s Macbeth. Instead of Scotland, the story is set in Virginia, at the fictional boarding school of Acheron Academy. Maria and Lily wish to continue their secret relationship into university, but a prize that gets you into the school of your choosing is certain to go to their rival, Delilah. If you know your Shakespeare, you’ll have a fairly good idea of what happens next.

However, don’t go into it thinking you’re going to get Macbeth, but modern. The story is heavily based on the play, as the book will constantly remind you, but the plot takes different directions to its source material, so there are still elements of surprise.

This brings me to one of the most noticeable changes: there are no witches. The girls converse with ghosts, who tell them prophecies, but there are many of them, not just three main ones. This came as a slight disappointment, because even if you don’t know Macbeth, you will most certainly know about the witches. Then, when I thought about it, I realised it works in the story’s favour, because you learn from the get-go that you don’t entirely know what’s going to happen.

The motivations of the two leads are also somewhat different. Where Macbeth and Lady Macbeth simply wanted power, Maria and Lily start off as just two teens in love who desperately want to be together.

This feels like a good time to talk about Lily, there’s a lot to unpack:

As you have probably already figured out, Lily is Lady Macbeth’s counterpart.

In the play, Lady Macbeth’s need for power is very much arguably because, as woman, she’s seen as her husband’s lesser half. In becoming queen, she would be able to puppeteer her country as well as Macbeth.  

Lily is slightly more complex. She wants to stay with her girlfriend, but she also yearns for a sense of power over her peers who only see her disability. I think this was clever on the author’s part, because the themes of power, and the corruption that comes with it, can live on despite the changes of context.

I also found that Lily reminded me of my first girlfriend who, while arguably having good intentions, could be very emotionally manipulative and selfish. When you’re young and in love for the first time, especially as an LGBTQ+ person, it’s so easy to see the world through rose-coloured glasses, and to want everything to work out. Unlike Maria, I eventually realised the relationship did me more harm than good and ended it.

But Macbeth is a tragedy, and that translates into this novel.

I usually get (as my mum once described it) very motherly over characters in books. In a story where most characters slowly act less and less human, that becomes difficult. That’s not to say I don’t like them, I just find them interesting as characters rather than likeable as people.

Having said that, I’d like to quickly bring up the girls’ initial antagonist: Delilah. Antagonist. Not villain.

The girls see Delilah, not just as a threat to their future, but also as a dishonest bitch. Delilah has cheated her way to her queen bee status at school, as is described in a way not unlike one might describe Hollywood mean girls like Heather Chandler or Regina George.

What I like about her though is that, along the way, it becomes clear to you as a reader that Delilah is far more nice and complex than the girls give her credit for. After all, by the end of the novel, they have done things far more unforgivable than Delilah ever did. In the end, the girls become hypocrites.

It would have been so easy to just make Delilah a one-dimensional popular girl, and I’m glad that wasn’t the case.

I think what’s really special about this book is that Shakespeare fans can enjoy its familiarity along with the unique ideas presented, and non-Shakespeare fans can enjoy a gothic tale of ambition spiralling out of control. It may even encourage more people to get into the original story, which I find very exciting.

There’s a reason Shakespeare is the world’s most famous playwright, and intentionally or not, his plays have influenced writers forever.