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Killing Shakespeare
If you could travel to any place and time in history, what would you do? For Isabel, Suresh, and Nathan, three teenagers in Ms Sullivan’s high school English class, the answer is: 1613 when Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre burned down. Nathan intends to ensure that all of Shakespeare’s plays burn down with it, so students will never have to study Shakespeare again. When they land in 1592, losing their time travel device during the journey, they are stranded in Elizabethan London with no return in sight. Now they must grow and adapt to survive, or die. In the process, they reckon with historical figures such as Francis Drake, John Dee, Walter Raleigh, and a young up-and-coming Shakespeare. Filled with intrigue and the volatile history of its time, Killing Shakespeare is a fantasy that examines life, love, literacy, and their importance to us.
272 pages, Paperback
Published June 4, 2024
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
June 28, 2026
A refreshing and deceptively complex YA time travel story that features one of the funniest motivations for time travel (one of the characters wishes to destroy Shakespeare's works so that future students don't have to write boring papers about it) and a surprisingly underused method (Stephen Hawkings' time travel party experiment). It doesn't shy away from the squelch and brutality of the past, the complicated positionality of the historical characters in the best and worst aspects of the Renaissance, and the role of the Western literary canon in modern education. Also it's very fun, and when it tilts into full sci-fi at the end, brace yourself for a wild ride.
Did Not Finish
September 2, 2024DNF Sep 2, 2024. The description really got my hopes up but DNF’d at pg 45. Some proper editing would have made such a difference.
The characters didn’t feel or sound like real teenagers. Their voices were inconsistent and sometimes blended together too much so I couldn’t tell them apart when POVs changed. And when they travel back in time, they don’t land where they wanted to so now we have to wait for them to figure things out and hope to see what was promised in the description. This is where the author lost me.
I was willing to put up with the unrealistic character voices for the plot but I’m 20% into the book and not much has happened… feels like the description misled me, so didn’t think it was worth reading on.
The characters didn’t feel or sound like real teenagers. Their voices were inconsistent and sometimes blended together too much so I couldn’t tell them apart when POVs changed. And when they travel back in time, they don’t land where they wanted to so now we have to wait for them to figure things out and hope to see what was promised in the description. This is where the author lost me.
I was willing to put up with the unrealistic character voices for the plot but I’m 20% into the book and not much has happened… feels like the description misled me, so didn’t think it was worth reading on.
November 4, 2024
In Koom Kankesan’s latest novel, Killing Shakespeare, three Canadian teens are transported back in time to Elizabethan England. When nerdy, science-buff, Suresh sends out invitations to a Time Travellers’ party the last thing he expects is for a genuine time traveller to show up. The new-arrival has journeyed back in time from the future by means of a hi-tech device that runs on ‘alpha waves’. Making use of the time traveller’s device, Suresh along with his two friends bookish, blue-stocking, Isabel and Nathan, the school football jock, transport themselves back in time to 1592 London. While Isabel hopes to meet her hero, William Shakespeare, Nathan has other plans for the celebrated bard. If Shakespeare can somehow be eliminated before becoming famous generations of high school students will be spared the tedium of having to study his plays!
However, once they have arrived in sixteenth-century London nothing is as it seems. The Spanish Armada of 1588 has mysteriously vanished into thin air and the English capital is awash with intrigue and factional rivalry at court. As misfortune would have it the time travelling device is lost (seemingly for good) and the three teens are forced to fend for themselves in a society they little understand. While Isabel wangles her way into the position of personal secretary cum servant to William Shakespeare, at this time still a relatively unknown actor and playwright, Nathan is quick to make a name for himself in the navy where he becomes a protégé of Francis Drake and Sir Walter Raleigh. Suresh, on the other hand, becomes personal assistant to Dr John Dee, the notorious occultist and alchemist who, having fallen out of favour with the queen and court, now lives in semi-impoverished retirement at his country house in Mortlake.
With time Suresh, Isabel and Nathan learn to navigate the complexities of the world they find themselves in, a world nevertheless subtly different from the one described in the history books they’d studied at school. The Armada is still missing and the paranoia about Imperial Spain ever-present. On top of that, evidence that they are not the only time travellers from the future slowly begins to mount. Eventually, as Shakespeare’s reputation grows Isabel’s proximity to the great dramatist offers the tantalising possibility of a return to their own time and place. For Suresh at least this cannot come a moment too soon, but will all three of them want to return? And what of the consequences for history if they do not?
However, once they have arrived in sixteenth-century London nothing is as it seems. The Spanish Armada of 1588 has mysteriously vanished into thin air and the English capital is awash with intrigue and factional rivalry at court. As misfortune would have it the time travelling device is lost (seemingly for good) and the three teens are forced to fend for themselves in a society they little understand. While Isabel wangles her way into the position of personal secretary cum servant to William Shakespeare, at this time still a relatively unknown actor and playwright, Nathan is quick to make a name for himself in the navy where he becomes a protégé of Francis Drake and Sir Walter Raleigh. Suresh, on the other hand, becomes personal assistant to Dr John Dee, the notorious occultist and alchemist who, having fallen out of favour with the queen and court, now lives in semi-impoverished retirement at his country house in Mortlake.
With time Suresh, Isabel and Nathan learn to navigate the complexities of the world they find themselves in, a world nevertheless subtly different from the one described in the history books they’d studied at school. The Armada is still missing and the paranoia about Imperial Spain ever-present. On top of that, evidence that they are not the only time travellers from the future slowly begins to mount. Eventually, as Shakespeare’s reputation grows Isabel’s proximity to the great dramatist offers the tantalising possibility of a return to their own time and place. For Suresh at least this cannot come a moment too soon, but will all three of them want to return? And what of the consequences for history if they do not?
June 27, 2024
A very good time-travel saga, which does such a good job of explaining the in-between, palimpsest-like feeling of time travellers: when you start, you really think you're breaking new ground, writing on a new page, but you quickly realise that you're just one or two or three in a continuum of many time travellers, and first you become aware that that "new" page you are writing on is merely a previous page that has been erased but there are still traces of what was on it everywhere. That is already a startling event, but even more startling is the next realization, that even after you finish writing that page you can easily be erased and started over on. But the book wears the paradoxes and mind-altering stuff loosely, as it is first a very fun thriller and can be enjoyed as such. The following is a passage that I really like:
"He stops pulling at his beard and bores into me, earring twitching. "So much depends upon this performance, does it not feel that way? So many important people are invited. Some say the Queen might appear."
"The Queen-really?"
"Oh, yes," he continues. "They say she and Raleigh have made the beast with two backs. Did you know that? Like Titania and the donkey-headed Bottom in our play!"
"I did know that... Will, you shouldn't bite the hand that feeds you." It is only then it occurs to me. Biting the hand that feeds you! It is so obvious-why did I not see it before? The play, the play's the thing to not only commemorate the weddings of Raleigh's friends but his own. His secret marriage to Throckmorton. Much as I and my efforts must remain hidden within Will's play, Raleigh and Throckmorton must pretend during the performance that they are acquainted and nothing more. He's doing this as a covert celebration for her, though it might be the Queen who is the guest of honour. Just like I'm doing this for the memory of my dead father. My yet-to-be-born father who, though I may never return, might yet read me in words.
Or am I doing this for myself? For Nathan perhaps? Or even Suresh? Who is to say? How unknowable we are to ourselves. Keen intelligence provides no fresh illumination; it only highlights ambiguities."
"He stops pulling at his beard and bores into me, earring twitching. "So much depends upon this performance, does it not feel that way? So many important people are invited. Some say the Queen might appear."
"The Queen-really?"
"Oh, yes," he continues. "They say she and Raleigh have made the beast with two backs. Did you know that? Like Titania and the donkey-headed Bottom in our play!"
"I did know that... Will, you shouldn't bite the hand that feeds you." It is only then it occurs to me. Biting the hand that feeds you! It is so obvious-why did I not see it before? The play, the play's the thing to not only commemorate the weddings of Raleigh's friends but his own. His secret marriage to Throckmorton. Much as I and my efforts must remain hidden within Will's play, Raleigh and Throckmorton must pretend during the performance that they are acquainted and nothing more. He's doing this as a covert celebration for her, though it might be the Queen who is the guest of honour. Just like I'm doing this for the memory of my dead father. My yet-to-be-born father who, though I may never return, might yet read me in words.
Or am I doing this for myself? For Nathan perhaps? Or even Suresh? Who is to say? How unknowable we are to ourselves. Keen intelligence provides no fresh illumination; it only highlights ambiguities."
December 7, 2024
Full disclosure: I am a friend of the author, and I was privileged enough to also read a very different early draft of this book.
This is a relatively slim volume masquerading as YA fiction. There are even discussion questions at the back. But despite being only 260 pages and ostensibly being aimed at younger readers there's a lot more going on here.
The main characters are three teenagers: a sort of jock who hates having to study Shakespeare at school, a kind of science nerd, and a girl who loves Shakespeare. They end up going back in time via an ingenious method which I'm surprised isn't used in time travel fiction all the time, and end up in Elizabethan England. Each of the teens ends up basically kind of "partnering up" with a key historical figure: Doctor Dee, Sir Walter Raleigh, and Shakespeare himself.
But now the book goes in directions that cannot be predicted. There was an initial desire on the part of the jock to destroy Shakespeare's works. But then it happens that perhaps they should be preserved and rewritten to send a message to the future. Matters are complicated by racial and social issues (the two male characters are non-Caucasian), and the fact that the three adults are essential to the gears that will drive England's colonization of the world both literally and culturally. Even the time travel itself is less a focus than the matter of time itself as a theme in the way life relates to it.
I wouldn't recommend it as a science fiction novel (any more than I would, say, Octavia Butler's Kindred), but it's heady stuff, with passages to tour-de-force writing that make it worthwhile as something else entirely.
This is a relatively slim volume masquerading as YA fiction. There are even discussion questions at the back. But despite being only 260 pages and ostensibly being aimed at younger readers there's a lot more going on here.
The main characters are three teenagers: a sort of jock who hates having to study Shakespeare at school, a kind of science nerd, and a girl who loves Shakespeare. They end up going back in time via an ingenious method which I'm surprised isn't used in time travel fiction all the time, and end up in Elizabethan England. Each of the teens ends up basically kind of "partnering up" with a key historical figure: Doctor Dee, Sir Walter Raleigh, and Shakespeare himself.
But now the book goes in directions that cannot be predicted. There was an initial desire on the part of the jock to destroy Shakespeare's works. But then it happens that perhaps they should be preserved and rewritten to send a message to the future. Matters are complicated by racial and social issues (the two male characters are non-Caucasian), and the fact that the three adults are essential to the gears that will drive England's colonization of the world both literally and culturally. Even the time travel itself is less a focus than the matter of time itself as a theme in the way life relates to it.
I wouldn't recommend it as a science fiction novel (any more than I would, say, Octavia Butler's Kindred), but it's heady stuff, with passages to tour-de-force writing that make it worthwhile as something else entirely.
February 26, 2026
I picked up Koom Kankesan's Killing Shakespeare thinking it would be a PG-13 version of the time-traveler children's books I devoured as a kid (e.g. Magic Tree House, The Time Warp Trio.) My advice to readers expecting the same: Killing Shakespeare is darker and more thematically dense than its packaging suggests. It's still a YA book through and through, the ideal reader probably being an 11th or 12th-grader. Maybe a very precocious middle schooler who understands decolonialism and the tech singularity can hang with it too? Who am I to say.
Fans of historical fiction will appreciate the lived-in details Kankesan brings to his Elizabethan setting, transporting his 21st-century teen characters and the reader both. What grabbed me the most, though, were the author's concerns around authorship and authenticity in our own time. The threat posed by AI to literacy and the humanities at large seems to be at the top of Kankesan's mind, and by the time these themes fully emerge in the latter half of the book, I found myself nodding along vigorously.
I recommend this book to anyone concerned about literature's ongoing relevance in the digital age, especially as it relates to the next generation of readers.
Fans of historical fiction will appreciate the lived-in details Kankesan brings to his Elizabethan setting, transporting his 21st-century teen characters and the reader both. What grabbed me the most, though, were the author's concerns around authorship and authenticity in our own time. The threat posed by AI to literacy and the humanities at large seems to be at the top of Kankesan's mind, and by the time these themes fully emerge in the latter half of the book, I found myself nodding along vigorously.
I recommend this book to anyone concerned about literature's ongoing relevance in the digital age, especially as it relates to the next generation of readers.
June 18, 2024
Koom Kankesan's Killing Shakespeare follows three teenage friends, each with their own distinct (and sometimes conflicting) societal identities, who travel back in time to confront their pedagogical nemesis, resulting in an adventure that unfolds with well-crafted historical scope and cinematic precision.
The narration shifts between the unique voices of these three teens, providing the author with an effective device to interweave several themes throughout the adventure seamlessly. These themes include imperialism, colonial perspectives and history, cultural appropriation, and the quest for autonomy within societal confines, all of which make the text ripe for its own pedagogical analysis.
As the parent of a teen, I also appreciated Koom's exploration of that confounding moment when seemingly passive students rise to subvert carefully dispensed tutelage or parenting into something beyond adult expectations.
The narration shifts between the unique voices of these three teens, providing the author with an effective device to interweave several themes throughout the adventure seamlessly. These themes include imperialism, colonial perspectives and history, cultural appropriation, and the quest for autonomy within societal confines, all of which make the text ripe for its own pedagogical analysis.
As the parent of a teen, I also appreciated Koom's exploration of that confounding moment when seemingly passive students rise to subvert carefully dispensed tutelage or parenting into something beyond adult expectations.
March 13, 2026
I really enjoyed this book, although I am not the age demographic of ‘young adult’ it is aimed at. I found the three teenagers, all very different from each other, interesting and I loved that instead of chapters each friend took it in turns to tell us what was happening from their point of view. I thought all the characters were well drawn and believable. We are also encounter AI along with the laws of physics with regard to time travel. The book for me was a real page turner in spite of my being very much older than ‘young adult’ it is intended for. I agree with others that the editing could have been better. However is is a good read and if you enjoy Doctor Who you will also enjoy this romp through history.
July 19, 2026
As a native of Scarborough, Ontario, lover of Shakespeare, and writer of time-travel novels, “Killing Shakespeare” holds a natural appeal for me. I don’t know Koom Kankesan, but I’d like to meet him now. His tale of three teens on a time travel mission to rid their lives of the Bard, is funny, fresh, and very well written. Isabel, Suresh, and Nathan may have access to AI and cell phones, but their exasperation with learning Shakespeare is timeless. Unlike all previous youth, they decide to do something about it, and address their problem at the source. I don’t see enough love for this book online. That is a pity and needs to change. Koom is a talented and original voice who deserves much more attention for his work. Highly recommended.
July 23, 2024
I really enjoyed this book. The story kept me interested from the beginning. Most of the book takes place in Elizabethan England and the author did a good job describing the setting and the historical figures who were part of the story including Walter Raleigh, Francis Drake and even Shakespeare himself. I found myself wanting to know more about Shakespeare and the time period after reading it.
Overall, it was a quick and enjoyable read and I recommend it, whether you like reading Shakespeare's plays or not.
Overall, it was a quick and enjoyable read and I recommend it, whether you like reading Shakespeare's plays or not.
November 23, 2024
The title, the idea and the beggining are great. But all the rest just felt so weird..
Things just happened out of nowhere, no plot, no explanation of things. I just cant understand what happened.
Like, how they got into the time travel is just random, then all the time they are there is weird, with many things added that dont make sense and made the story not develop well.... it had potential, but it just didnt make it..
Things just happened out of nowhere, no plot, no explanation of things. I just cant understand what happened.
Like, how they got into the time travel is just random, then all the time they are there is weird, with many things added that dont make sense and made the story not develop well.... it had potential, but it just didnt make it..
Read
January 15, 2025Not sure about this book. Feels like weird Shakespeare fan fiction. Also the ending was unsatisfying-for me anyways. Some parts I did like, though. I couldn’t stop reading it, even though I wasn’t sure about it.
January 11, 2025
Absolute bore
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews