C
Christopher Moore
Christopher Moore is the author of fun, quirky novels like Island of the Sequined Love Nun and Practical Demonkeeping. If you enjoy stories that blend humor with the supernatural, you'll likely find a lot to love in his work.
The Serpent of Venice
Synopsis
Pocket, the sharp-tongued English fool last seen upending the court of King Lear, has landed in Venice — and someone very much wants him dead. Lured to a cellar under the pretense of tasting a rare wine, he is chained to a wall and left to die by a trio of powerful men whose profits from the coming Crusade he has been loudly threatening to spoil.
But Pocket does not die so easily. Freed by a strange creature from the deep, he sets about repaying the men who wronged him, and his scheming tangles him in the affairs of a Moorish general named Othello, a merchant with a pound of flesh at stake, and a clever heiress guarding her fortune behind a riddle of caskets.
Christopher Moore stitches together Othello, The Merchant of Venice, and a nod to Poe's "The Cask of Amontillado" into a bawdy, blood-slicked comedy of revenge. The second Pocket novel is filthy, clever, and irreverent — Shakespeare by way of a jester with a grudge.
Genres
Characters
Mr. PocketProtagonist
The diminutive, foul-mouthed English fool, scheming his way through Venice bent on revenge.
IagoAntagonist
The scheming officer whose plots against Othello intertwine with Pocket's.
OthelloSupporting
The Moorish general of Venice, drawn from Shakespeare's tragedy.
ShylockSupporting
A Jewish moneylender owed a pound of flesh.
PortiaSupporting
A clever heiress whose suitors must solve the riddle of the caskets.