More than Kin and Less than Kind

Weaving together elements from several of Shakespeare's plays, More than Kin and Less than Kind is a tale of love, murder, a throne usurped, and revenge - recast in a setting of Slavic myth and legend. The familiar motivations and actions of characters from the pages of Hamlet, Macbeth, and Othello are revisited (and expanded upon) in the ambient of the myth and magic of medieval Russian and Eastern Europe. Maxim, coerced by his lover/sister-in-law, murders his brother, the Grand Duke of Svetloyr, and supplants his nephew Konstantin on the throne. But Konstantin is not so easily cast aside, and, instigated by the warnings of his dead father's domovoi, he must find a way to prove his uncle's complicity in the late Grand Duke's murder so as to claim his rightful throne. Along the way, Maxim must deal with three ved'ma (witches), as well as an increasingly oddly-acting Grand Duchess, cover the tracks of his illicit rise to the throne, and cope with his own guilt over all of it. Meanwhile, Konstantin finds himself trying to come up with a plan to remove Maxim from power - even as he must fight a giant matryoshka doll, negotiate with forest spirits like the leshii or various immortal sages, brave the inferno of the firebird and the other challenges at the World Tree, and raise an army to defeat his uncle. In the midst of it all is Baron Igor, playing both sides in the hope of raising his own position, regardless of which side proves victorious...