Review by Frank Plowright

A second visit to the high school for those with mystical abilities proves no more satisfying than the first, with the writing team of Molly Horton Booth and Stephanie Kate Strohm doubling down on the methods that made Twelfth Grade Night such a chore to read.

As before, the plot is adapted from a Shakespeare play, in this case King Lear. Instead of an aged monarch attempting to assess the loyalty of his daughters, we have Leah, about to step down from leading the cheerleaders and uncertain who should replace her. She settles on the idea of a competition. This is backed up with the ongoing drama of teenage relationships.

So far, there’s a workable idea, but the writing collapses because Booth and Strohm are unable to sacrifice a smart line of dialogue under any circumstances. Minor allowance can be made for drama requiring heightened talent for a snappy return or an observation that would only actually occur to the sharpest of wits, but the writers always prioritise showing off how smart they are over any sense of reality. Nor do they have any inclination to explain who people are. It means readers are thrown into a new world without a clue who’s talking and why we should care. We’re given reasons to sympathise with them, but these are obviously expressed information dumps.

The absolute biggest problem, though is the source material. If you’re going to update the writer many consider the greatest the English language has ever produced, you need to do it properly. King Cheer supplies the occasional neat touch, such as the French king’s role being allocated to the French teacher, but fudges so many aspects to force the plot. And while tolerance is a virtue to be promoted, the place to promote it isn’t in a version of a widely known play featuring extremely little tolerance.

As with the previous book, the only real saving grace is Jamie Green’s expressive cartooning. A lot of characters feature, and Green ensures they’re all distinct and attractive, while also avoiding everyone being a variation on the same body type.

Evidence of a few teething problems is common to the first volume of many a successful series, but there ought to be improvement by the second, and on that score King Cheer fails completely.