Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Prince of Shadows: A Novel of Romeo and Juliet
    Prince of Shadows: A Novel of Romeo and Juliet
    Prince of Shadows: A Novel of Romeo and Juliet
    Audiobook13 hours

    Prince of Shadows: A Novel of Romeo and Juliet

    Written by Rachel Caine

    Narrated by Kyle McCarley

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    In the Houses of Montague and Capulet, there is only one goal: power. The boys are born to fight and die for honor and-if they survive-marry for influence and money, not love. The girls are assets, to be spent wisely. Their wishes are of no import. Their fates are written on the day they are born.

    Benvolio Montague, cousin to Romeo, knows all this. He expects to die for his cousin, for his house, but a spark of rebellion still lives inside him. At night, he is the Prince of Shadows, the greatest thief in Verona-and he risks all as he steals from House Capulet. In doing so, he sets eyes on convent-bound Rosaline, and a terrible curse begins that will claim the lives of many in Verona . . . and will rewrite all their fates, forever.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTantor Media, Inc
    Release dateMar 5, 2014
    ISBN9781452685472
    Prince of Shadows: A Novel of Romeo and Juliet
    Author

    Rachel Caine

    Rachel Caine is the New York Times, USA TODAY, and #1 internationally bestselling author of more than thirty novels, including the immensely popular Morganville Vampires, Weather Warden, Outcast Season, and Revivalist series. Learn more at RachelCaine.com.

    More audiobooks from Rachel Caine

    Related to Prince of Shadows

    Related audiobooks

    Young Adult For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Estella’s Fate

      May 17, 2023

      Estella’s Fate
      7 min read

    • Article

      Estella’s Fate

      May 17, 2023

      Estella’s Fate
      7 min read

    • Article

      The Scarlet PEBBLE

      Feb 28, 2024

      The Scarlet PEBBLE
      9 min read

    • Article

      The Witch Finders

      Jul 16, 2020

      Beth pulled her cloak tightly around her. It was the very last day of October and the air was damp and chill. Dead autumn leaves lay in deep piles in the woods and smoke curled into the night air from her cottage. Not far to go now. She bent her head

      4 min read

    • Article

      The Man I Should Have Married

      Dec 29, 2019

      The Man I Should Have Married
      11 min read

    • Article

      Equinox

      May 18, 2022

      In this strange world, where identities change with the rising and setting of the sun, supernatural forces are at work – and they’re causing trouble… St Leonars prison was an appropriately imposing building. It rose out of the surrounding shacks and

      5 min read

    • Article

      The Invitation

      Aug 21, 2023

      York, October 1644 Before I’ve even mustered the courage to knock, the door to the townhouse flings open. I drop my hand. “It is me, John Falmouth,” I say and wince at how loud my voice carries into the night. My greeting falters when I look up and n

      6 min read

    • Article

      Let’s Play Dead

      Mar 3, 2020

      There was a man, let’s call him Henry VIII. There was his wife, let’s call her Anne B. Let’s give them a castle and make it nice. Let’s give her many boy babies but make them dead. Let’s give him a fussy way of being. Let’s make her smart and sneaky,

      17 min read

    • Article

      The Money Box

      Jun 10, 2022

      This is not a morality tale. It’s simply a story. It began innocently enough, over a lunch of beef pho in the Financial District, when my friend Paolo first mentioned the Money Box. Paolo was a pupa of industry then, waiting to emerge as a titan. He

      19 min read

    • Article

      Six Sonnets

      Jan 1, 2021

      Goldenrod, I could say, you know, everybody wants somethingfrom me, but, well, everybody wants something and nobody wantsnothing from me, goldenrod, towhead, beast. Goldenrod, you packthe meadows like gold-plated sardines. I have heart palpitationsbu

      3 min read

    • Article

      I, Von Economo

      Oct 10, 2022

      I’d never seen a Bentley Mulsanne in the flesh, not even in the chop shops where I sold the luxury cars I boosted. Yet there it was, parked behind an inner-city soup kitchen with its signature hood ornament of silver wings stretched wide to the heave

      12 min read

    • Article

      J. Jezewska Stevens

      Dec 15, 2017

      The party was a failure. I can’t even tell you what a failure it was. There are no words. Only a great pain in my chest when I wake up. On the veranda. It’s better when I sit in the chair. Oh, but then I can see around. The gauzy curtains, pushed by

      15 min read

    • Article

      The BRACELET

      Jan 30, 2024

      The BRACELET
      6 min read

    • Article

      Pulling Up Azaleas

      Jan 10, 2023

      Throughout their lives, women are showered with bouquets of roses on numerous splendid occasions. But men? They’re only given flowers at their funeral. It’s a harsh world for men, as our lives tend to go unappreciated until death. Such was the case a

      22 min read

    • Article

      New World

      Aug 2, 2018

      New World
      2 min read

    • Article

      Life In The past Lane

      Aug 27, 2021

      Life In The past Lane
      5 min read

    • Article

      Yara And The Witch Queen

      Oct 1, 2019

      I knew the dangers of witchcraft. My parents had told me about the time before I was born, when magic plagued our desert kingdom of Bahati. Untrained witch doctors trying to cure warts ended up paralyzing their patients or turning them into crocodile

      10 min read

    • Article

      All Of Us Here

      Jun 4, 2020

      All Of Us Here
      6 min read

    • Article

      It’s Come to This

      Sep 1, 2021

      It’s Come to This
      16 min read

    • Article

      ‘Cygnet’: Featured Fiction from Season Butler

      Jun 25, 2019

      A excerpt from Butler's debut coming-of-age novel, set in an appealingly rich world with quirky, flawed characters and a dramatic oceanfront landscape. The post ‘Cygnet’: Featured Fiction from Season Butler appeared first on The Millions.

      4 min read

    • Article

      Our Lady Of The Rockies

      Aug 7, 2023

      Our Lady Of The Rockies
      13 min read

    • Article

      Excerpts From The Works Of The 2024 Whiting Award Winners

      Apr 10, 2024

      The 2024 Whiting Award winners were announced Wednesday night. Below are excerpts from their work.

      19 min read

    • Article

      Every CLOUD

      Aug 31, 2022

      Every CLOUD
      6 min read

    • Article

      The Bad Housekeeper

      Jul 17, 2020

      The Bad Housekeeper
      5 min read

    • Article

      Haunted

      Sep 27, 2023

      Haunted
      6 min read

    • Article

      The Last Friend on Earth

      May 4, 2023

      It was as if Doreen Saunders had been waiting for me, passing the time until my arrival. She might as well have been sitting in a rocking chair, knitting needles clicking, jam tarts cooling on the side, the door wide open, waiting for the next visito

      6 min read

    • Article

      The Art Of Secretion

      May 5, 2022

      The Art Of Secretion
      8 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Prince of Shadows

    4/5

    52 ratings8 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 5/5
      lovely retelling of romeo and juliet from the pov of benvolio and rosaline. Rachel Caine adds a nice spin on the classic, giving more depth to the characters and storyline. also, who doesn't like a little vigilante "bad" boy?
    • 4/5
      A dark, clever retelling of Romeo & Juliet, full of twisted politics, heartbreaking relationships, and a wry, witty narrator in the form of Benvolio, an Italian Robin Hood bent on holding his world together, no matter how deftly it explodes. Love that Romeo was portrayed exactly as he should be: a bratty, self-absorbed, yet still lovable 16-year-old. It's Meecutio, who completely and utterly broke my heart. Intrigue, horror, love & heartbreak abound! Don't miss this one.
    • 3/5
      I won a copy of this book in a goodreads giveaway. This is the first book I've read by this author and I liked it. I thought the idea for the retelling was very clever and the writing was beautiful. Parts of the story were kind of slow for me but overall I thought it was entertaining and well done.
    • 4/5
      For more reviews, gifs, Cover Snark and more, visit A Reader of Fictions.Back in that mysterious time before I began book blogging, I read a few of the Morganville Vampires novels. I didn’t stop because I didn’t like them; they just sort of fell by the wayside, as I am wont to do with series at times. I was curious, to say the least, to see that Caine had made the leap from vampires to a Shakespearean retelling, but she has landed this vast jump deftly. Prince of Shadows is going to be a vast surprise for Caine fans, I suspect, told largely in classic style and looking at Romeo and Juliet from a fun new perspective.First and foremost, I’m impressed with Caine’s writing in Prince of Shadows. She strikes a nice balance betwixt the ornate language of Shakespeare and a more reader-friendly style. At times, the lines are drawn almost directly from Romeo and Juliet, and those lines blend nicely. It’s no small feat managing to stand up in some measure to Shakespeare. Though Caine’s style is quite different, I think she hits the right tone, and I very much approve of the fact that she kept the bawdy comedy inherent to Shakespearean humor, even in tragedies like this one.Caine’s retelling too is quite clever. Cast as the lead is Benvolio, Romeo’s cousin. He’s a supporting character in Romeo and Juliet, standing in as a young tough from the Montague family. From his viewpoint, we can see the larger context of the tragedy of those star-crossed lovers. Though the paranormal elements get a bit overwhelming right at the end, the rest of the novel takes place very much in a convincing historical Verona, as defined by Shakespeare. The twists she’s put on Romeo and Juliet, even when not to my taste, put a very interesting spin on the original, and fit very well with it. Prince of Shadows isn’t so much a retelling as a frame in which we can learn that things were not as they appeared.The characters of lovestruck Romeo and Juliet both do and do not come off looking better in Prince of Shadows than they did in the play. What Caine really emphasizes is their youth and how out of control of circumstances everyone felt. Many characters, however, retain the black or white natures they had in the Shakespeare. The characters seen in a greatly new light are Benvolio, Mercutio, and Rosaline.Mercutio has always been the saddest figure in Romeo and Juliet to me, and the same is true here. I’m not entirely sure how I feel about some of Caine’s revisions, but he still breaks my heart. I adore that Caine’s Mercutio is gay, and I like too how those of good character find little fault with him for that. Whether a character believes that love is love is a good litmus test for their nature.The other change in Prince of Shadows is an increased focus on female roles in the political situation. Though a male is still the lead, he’s surrounded by strong women, both evil and good. His grandmother rules the Montague clan with an iron fist, though scarcely able to move about. His young sister does her best to manipulate within the scope that society allows her. Benvolio’s mother ends up a more powerful figure as well. Rosaline, of course, serves as the best representation, almost an Elizabeth Bennet figure, unwilling to settle for the role provided to women during her era.Prince of Shadows is not the heavily romance-focused, action-packed adventure that Caine’s Morganville Vampires fans might be looking for. It is, however, a fascinating reconsideration of Romeo and Juliet, and will likely interest fellow Shakespeare nerds.
    • 4/5
      If a retelling of Romeo and Juliet sounds sorta ho hum I would say give this a try anyway. The biggest thing about this book is it gives a wonderful reason for Romeo falling for Juliet after seeing her. The story is still heartbreaking like the play, lots of death and revenge. The main POV is Benvolio Montague and he is also the "Prince of Shadows" a thief that steals mostly from the rich in town with his targets also being chosen for revenge of slights against him and the Montagues. If you like the play and different reinterpretations of Shakespeare then you heed to pick this up. I'm glad I read it and it is a really entertaining read,


      Digital review copy provided by the publisher through Edelweiss
    • 4/5
      Taking Romeo and Juliet as an inspiration and telling the story from Benvolio (one of the survivor's) point of view this is an interesting look at the story, and one I actually really liked. The only characterisation I didn't really like was Mercutio, he was my favourite character in the play, but it's a minor quibble, and not because he's gay.I enjoyed the read, liked the characters and liked the resolution and Rosaline also appealed to me. I want to re-read the play now.
    • 4/5
      Benvolio Montague is loyal to his house, and he knows his life isn't his own, he owes all to the family. However, at night as the Prince of Shadows, a master thief, he rebels and takes control of his own fate. Until he robs the House of Capulet and meets Rosalind, a woman destined for the convent who dreams of more. Their fates will never be the same.
    • 5/5
      5 Stars*I received this uncorrected galley from Penguin first to read*In the enemy houses of Montague and Capulet only two things really matter; power and heirs.Knowing what is expected of him Benvolio Montague, cousin to Romeo Montague, realizes his double identity as the Prince of Shadows could cost him everything. What he doesn’t expect as he steals from the Capulets’ in rebellion is falling in love with Rosaline Capulet, which sets in motion a dangerous curse that will fall on both houses.As far as retellings go this novel is probably my favorite, or at least in the top five. I should mention that I am not a huge fan of retellings. Even after thinking about what I would write I am lost for words. It’s been years (quite a few of them) since I read Romeo and Juliet. I liked it but not as much as my friends. It wasn’t something I reread or wanted to reread. Prince of Shadows will be something that I would consider rereading. Benvolio is an interesting and fun protagonist to read. There’s a lot of action, good drama, and of course romance. It’s something I would absolutely recommend, especially to Romeo and Juliet fans.