There is much to be commended in this edited volume by Keith Bodner and Benjamin J. M. Johnson, with particular regard to the careful attention to literary cues suggestions and possibilities examining characters and characterizations in the books of Kings. The continued maturation and new positive or constructive directions of literary approaches to reading biblical texts (particularly texts of the OT) is demonstrated through the varying approaches and possibilities of the essays of this volume. As is true of all such collections, the varying angles, approaches, methodologies, and attention to details of the texts vary from chapter to chapter, allowing for the unique contributions of its diverse authorship and the many characters and their characterizations that are expounded.John Barton opens the volume with his essay “Characterization and Ethics” that provides a broad sketch sifting through the book of Kings overall. Chapter 2 is A. Graeme Auld’s essay on Ahaz and Jeroboam. Sara Koenig (ch. 3) pursues a rereading of Bathsheba that seeks to read “beneath the surface” toward ways in which Bathsheba has been misread and might be better read. Chapter 4, by Amos Frisch, portrays Solomon in his many complexities as a character, while ch. 5, by Rachelle Gilmour, attempts to re-present Rehoboam as himself a more complex character (both good and evil). Paul Hedley Jones’s treatment of the unnamed “man of God from Judah” and the “old prophet from Bethel” in 1 Kgs 13 offers a suggestive rereading of the complexities of these typological characters for the later community. Chapter 7, by Lissa M. Wray Beal, pursues a dance motif for the movements of Ahab as he jostles between Jezebel and Elijah. Athalya Brenner-Idan’s essay (ch. 8) provides reenvisionings of Jezebel via the possible perspectives of the characters (both named and unnamed, mentioned and unmentioned) that surrounded Jezebel. Chapter 9 (Iain Provan) considers the character of Elijah as both positive and negative in textual characterization. Stuart Lasine (ch. 10) looks on the characterization of Elisha. This is followed by essays on Jehu (Mark Roncace) and Athaliah (Patricia Dutcher-Walls) in their varying characterizations. Chapter 13 addresses subaltern characters of widow, orphans, creditor as antagonist and neighbors as friends, to address issues current in the sociopolitical context of Elisha in Israel (and for later readers). The collection closes out with three chapters on three significant final kings in 2 Kings and how what is said and not said both remain important even as how what is finally said gives shape to characters/characterizations: Hezekiah (David T. Lamb), Manasseh (Alison L. Joseph), and Josiah (S. Min Chun).This wide-ranging collection provides numerous fresh ways of hearing, rehearing, and reimagining the texts of the book of Kings with helpful indications of subjectivities, literary markers and queues (or absence of markers/cues), and the various ways both ancient and modern communities of readers have heard, reheard, and might rehear such texts. The collection includes some approaches that are markedly postmodern-esque and others that seem more rooted in the historical critical reconstructions of textual backgrounds (even while seeking to focus on the closer images within the texts themselves). There are approaches found within this volume that draw on such varied reading strategies as feminist, multivocal/perspectival, subaltern, and focalization. The attempts throughout are intent on reconsidering the characters of Kings that is first centered in the text of Kings itself but engaged via multiple approaches in order to note the nuances of textual shape (and shaping) toward characters, their representation (and re-presentation) in light of such shaping.Though the volume remains helpful in the ways many of the essays have paid careful attention to nuances of grammar, syntax, and literary shaping, there are also a number of points at which the potential for either missing key factors or misrepresenting others seems to have entered the readings. The following are a couple such examples. Provan mentions Baal as son of El (p. 136), but the texts of Ras Shamra seem to only do this once (and this against the many times he is called “son of Dagan” who seems to be an Amorite import). Frisch argues that Solomon’s portrayal is “all light” initially in 1 Kings, but this seems to downplay the numerous negative ambiguities of Solomon’s characterization even as Frisch admits the final portrayal complex and wavering (for one such counter-example, see Rick Wadholm Jr., “Discerning God in 1 Kings 3: Wisdom in High Places and Pentecostal Praxis,” Journal of Pentecostal Theology 28 [2019]: 1–14). None of these issues should preclude this volume receiving broad engagement within the study of Scripture, literary and characterization-oriented approaches to Scripture, and specifically future work on the books of Kings.Such detailed attention to the texts themselves (as are provided throughout) and the manner in which characters are portrayed (or not) provides a helpful contribution to noting the particularities of the final form(s) of the texts. The characters, even when not rounded by their author/editor, provide various visions, orientations, hearings, and perspectives on these texts and the world of these texts. I hope that further volumes of this sort may continue to be produced, engaging other portions of the canon of Scripture, and that such literary approaches as portrayed among the authors of this volume (who have previously written many works making use of some of these approaches) might find more welcome spaces among others engaging the texts of Kings (and Scripture in general).