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3.54 AVERAGE
3.54 AVERAGE
emotional
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
dark
emotional
hopeful
mysterious
sad
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I love sci fi, and I love Hamlet, so I was really hoping/expecting to like this. But it was just…annoying. There were good aspects but those were mostly the moments where the characters’ internal monologues felt most directly lifted from Hamlet. I kept thinking “this would be better if it was more like Hamlet.” Because despite drawing from a source with very nuanced and deep characters, the characters in this felt flat. Their motivations didn’t really make sense, and often the reasons they didn’t make sense were because of keeping some aspects of the source material and discarding others. For example, in the play Hamlet kills R&G at least in part because he feels they have betrayed him. But in this adaptation, he never really had any connection to their stand-in character so his killing of that character makes no real sense. Also his whole motivation for revenge on his uncle makes way less sense in a modern academic/research context. These are not members of a royal family constantly embroiled in bloody wars and conflicts. These are researchers. It just didn’t feel believable that he’d jump so quickly to murder.
The “action” scenes are all chaotic in a way that makes them really hard to follow, and sometimes have continuity errors? I.e. a character drops her gun on the ground dramatically and then in the very next scene is “still holding her gun.” Also the way it is narrated from multiple points of view does not really work as it is really repetitive. We just don’t need to hear the same info from multiple perspectives… it also felt like half of this book was just the characters running around to different-but-for-all-intents-and-purposes-identical rooms, getting blood on the floor, and knocking things over. For a “locked room mystery” they sure did spend a lot of time switching rooms for no reason.
I’ve also seen other people commenting that it doesn’t make sense to write a mystery based on Hamlet because we already know what happens/who the killer is/etc. And that’s a good point. But I think it’s even more than that, because some of the major plot points in Hamlet are not used in this, so I found myself wondering/anticipating how they were going to handle this or that plot point…and then said plot point would just simply not occur. Meanwhile, others felt shoehorned in.
Also, yes it is cool that the author decided to make the Ophelia stand-in character have more screen time than Ophelia does but did she have to be so annoying and obtuse? I saw another review saying she seemed like a really generic girlboss character and I so agree. Original Ophelia was cleverer and more interesting, she just had the unfortunate luck to be living in the 1600s (or whenever we think Hamlet takes place). It sort of felt like the author did not understand the character of Ophelia, and the ways that in the source material she is explicitly subversive and calls others out on their hypocrisy. Yes, she lacks agency and that is something that a modern retelling could play with. But they didn’t even try to use the interesting aspects of the original character (of which there are many) to base her new version on (and they did do this reasonably well with the other characters).
Safe to say the Lion King is still the best genre-shifted Hamlet adaptation
The “action” scenes are all chaotic in a way that makes them really hard to follow, and sometimes have continuity errors? I.e. a character drops her gun on the ground dramatically and then in the very next scene is “still holding her gun.” Also the way it is narrated from multiple points of view does not really work as it is really repetitive. We just don’t need to hear the same info from multiple perspectives… it also felt like half of this book was just the characters running around to different-but-for-all-intents-and-purposes-identical rooms, getting blood on the floor, and knocking things over. For a “locked room mystery” they sure did spend a lot of time switching rooms for no reason.
I’ve also seen other people commenting that it doesn’t make sense to write a mystery based on Hamlet because we already know what happens/who the killer is/etc. And that’s a good point. But I think it’s even more than that, because some of the major plot points in Hamlet are not used in this, so I found myself wondering/anticipating how they were going to handle this or that plot point…and then said plot point would just simply not occur. Meanwhile, others felt shoehorned in.
Also, yes it is cool that the author decided to make the Ophelia stand-in character have more screen time than Ophelia does but did she have to be so annoying and obtuse? I saw another review saying she seemed like a really generic girlboss character and I so agree. Original Ophelia was cleverer and more interesting, she just had the unfortunate luck to be living in the 1600s (or whenever we think Hamlet takes place). It sort of felt like the author did not understand the character of Ophelia, and the ways that in the source material she is explicitly subversive and calls others out on their hypocrisy. Yes, she lacks agency and that is something that a modern retelling could play with. But they didn’t even try to use the interesting aspects of the original character (of which there are many) to base her new version on (and they did do this reasonably well with the other characters).
Safe to say the Lion King is still the best genre-shifted Hamlet adaptation
dark
emotional
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Content Warnings
Graphic: Self harm, Sexual content, Suicide attempt
DNF 33%; I'm sure this is terribly interesting for someone else, but it never grabbed me. Good prose and phrasing though!
adventurous
dark
tense
fast-paced
There’s so much to like about this book. In a world that, honestly, doesn’t need more Shakespeare retellings, this one at least felt fresh and vivid.
Things I liked
I really liked how fleshed out Felicia was as an Ophelia character who gets to take control of things a little and have some say in how things go. Blending Ophelia and Laertes’ stories was a good choice. The history between Felicia and Hayden is entirely off-page minus some brief flashbacks and expository segments, but their (ex-)relationship felt very real.
Horatio! Horatio as an AI is a fantastic adaptational choice and I really enjoyed Horatio’s narrated scenes in particular. Liu really made him feel strange and inhuman, and having him be ever-present, confined to watching the action while unable to intervene was an interesting way of working with Horatio’s helplessness. I love a good robot/AI character and relationships between humans and robots, so the development of Hayden and Horatio’s relationship is a big tick for me for the most part, though it felt a little out-of-place. If Liu wants to write a book that centralises an AI/human romantic relationship I would read it in a heartbeat.
Hayden is a pretty successful Hamlet figure: selfish, brilliant, wavering between doubt and anger and fear. Making him a washed out student who is brilliant but divorced from the real world feels right, as is his strained relationship with his equally intelligent father. Hayden’s obsession with and terror of death and decay is probably the most successful part of the book.
Em X. Liu has some fantastic turns of phrase and a really visceral writing style. I don’t think the writing style worked for their conceit (more on that below) but I enjoyed actually reading their prose.
Things that didn’t work for me
The removal of Hayden/Hamlet’s mother. The Gertrude character isn’t even present except in a phone call and as someone pulling strings off-page which is a baffling decision for me. If you’re going to adapt Hamlet, removing his relationship with his mother almost entirely just seems to remove a rich vein of characterisation and conflict.
The epistolary conceit. I love epistolary, I love fictional historical narratives, I love footnotes. But this just doesn’t work because it doesn’t read like a historical narrative, it reads like a novel. The author even seems to recognise this at times, because they have their narrator put in some unconvincing explanation about their own narrative choices. It’s all just too <em>internal</em>, too immediate; as you read you’re there in Hayden or Felicia’s head. This would have been better served as a straightforward narrative or interspersing narrative and epistolary sections without all the extra layers.
The locked room mystery. Honestly, there’s only so mysterious you can make a Hamlet retelling, and it felt like the book got a bit bogged down in this. The concept is great, and Elsinore as a futuristic lab is fantastic, but it didn’t fully succeed as a mystery. Perhaps if it had been shorter, or if it had lent more into the tragedy rather than the mystery. I’m in two minds about flipping the ending so Horatio dies and Hayden and Felicia survive: the Hamlet figure, at least, feels less tragic when he walks out into the world again.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Self harm, Injury/Injury detail
dark
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I wanted so badly to like this book but there ended up being too many culminating things that led to an unideal read. The same tone and voice being used across the different perspectives, the overwhelming exasperation at the MC managing to be horny under such circumstances, and the humanized security system managing to sound “breathy” are all things that picked at me while listening to the audiobook.
Overall disappointed.
Overall disappointed.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Self harm, Suicidal thoughts
Yes, this stands on its own as a locked room mystery that actually applies plausible near-future technology — along with its hypothetical consequences and dilemmas. The Death I Gave Him is an imaginative and ambitious sci-fi debut novel — and one that impresses me further when I think how different in tone and style it is to Liu's comical, lighthearted debut novella, If Found, Return to Hell. The only big elements these two works have in common are the implementation of experimental narrative techniques... and maybe the underlying themes of queerness and loneliness.
Despite dealing with emotive themes and scenarios, there is a sense of removal and distance that this novel partakes in that may pose a challenge to some readers. The book is formatted in a quasi-academic journal style. An unnamed narrator from an unknown time in the far future is chronicling the events that transpired in the span of one evening in the year 2047. The chapters are composed of "primary source" AI Horatio transcripts and "secondary source" vignettes that the unnamed narrator has taken from magazine interviews with Felicia (parallel of Ophelia). To fill in the blanks, the narrator then combines those sources with "partially fictitious" accounts of what the narrator believes happened in the moment – either from Hayden's (Hamlet) or AI Horatio's point of view. The narrator claims these fictitious sections rely on hard data compiled from AI records, texts, and material like that, but such claims introduce the question of methodological rigor, and general narrative bias and unreliability into the mix.
The overall effect of this choice is that there's an Inception-like immersion trick, where the reader may be jolted from one level of fictitious fabrication into another — triggered by a chapter change or a intrusive footnote. I think this narrative choice is enriching and allowing for a multitude of interpretations and possibilities, but I could see how others may consider it too "on the nose," disruptive, or inconclusive.
In their loose retelling of Hamlet, Liu also succeeds in reinvigorating my respect for the Bard and his complex but all too flawed characters.The Hayden, Felicia, and co. may not be entirely likable or comfortable to exist with (except AI Horatio, who is quite lovable), but they're compellingly human ones all the same.
Despite dealing with emotive themes and scenarios, there is a sense of removal and distance that this novel partakes in that may pose a challenge to some readers. The book is formatted in a quasi-academic journal style. An unnamed narrator from an unknown time in the far future is chronicling the events that transpired in the span of one evening in the year 2047. The chapters are composed of "primary source" AI Horatio transcripts and "secondary source" vignettes that the unnamed narrator has taken from magazine interviews with Felicia (parallel of Ophelia). To fill in the blanks, the narrator then combines those sources with "partially fictitious" accounts of what the narrator believes happened in the moment – either from Hayden's (Hamlet) or AI Horatio's point of view. The narrator claims these fictitious sections rely on hard data compiled from AI records, texts, and material like that, but such claims introduce the question of methodological rigor, and general narrative bias and unreliability into the mix.
The overall effect of this choice is that there's an Inception-like immersion trick, where the reader may be jolted from one level of fictitious fabrication into another — triggered by a chapter change or a intrusive footnote. I think this narrative choice is enriching and allowing for a multitude of interpretations and possibilities, but I could see how others may consider it too "on the nose," disruptive, or inconclusive.
In their loose retelling of Hamlet, Liu also succeeds in reinvigorating my respect for the Bard and his complex but all too flawed characters.The Hayden, Felicia, and co. may not be entirely likable or comfortable to exist with (except AI Horatio, who is quite lovable), but they're compellingly human ones all the same.
challenging
dark
sad
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Holy fuck.
Book that makes you insane. Book that eats your brain. Book that is all I will be thinking about for WEEKS.
This is, first and foremost, a Hamlet retelling, and the way it interfaces with the original text is absolutely beautiful. Read the original Hamlet first, if you haven’t - trust me when I say you will get SO MUCH MORE out of this book afterwards. There is a perfect balance maintained throughout between resonances with the original text and carefully placed dissonant notes that together create a textual conversation I was delighted to engage in. This novel is an effective thriller and a gorgeous train-crash tragedy, but it is also, on some level, a reading of Hamlet, and I must say it is a reading I very much agree with.
Hayden himself is absolutely stunning, and I could write a whole essay on the way the book draws you into his thoroughly fractured mind, the way his neuroses and thought spirals are depicted, but I don’t want to spoil the experience too much, so I will just say it is both immersive and viscerally *real*, and let that serve as both recommendation and warning. The author has performed a flawless surgical transplant, removing shakespearian ideas about death, the afterlife, and fate and slotting in modern scientific models and medical research in their place, and that change spirals out across Hayden’s thinking patterns in a deeply believable way that reframes the entire premise.
But even with that, in my mind the mark of a truly perfect Hamlet isn’t Hamlet himself, but Horatio and Ophelia. If those two both feel right, you’ve got magic. This book has magic. It’s such a breath of fresh air to see an Ophelia who is allowed to be empowered and human without being over-idealised, and the relationship between Hayden and Horatio knocked the breath out of my lungs more than once. There was a point towards the end where I simply had to put the book down and breathe for a minute before I could go on witnessing it.
For as much as every element of the premise and plot is making me crazy, “what if Horatio made a life-for-a-life bargain with the literal narrative path of Hamlet as a tragedy and WON ” will truly be living in my brain rent free for the rest of time.
Book that makes you insane. Book that eats your brain. Book that is all I will be thinking about for WEEKS.
This is, first and foremost, a Hamlet retelling, and the way it interfaces with the original text is absolutely beautiful. Read the original Hamlet first, if you haven’t - trust me when I say you will get SO MUCH MORE out of this book afterwards. There is a perfect balance maintained throughout between resonances with the original text and carefully placed dissonant notes that together create a textual conversation I was delighted to engage in. This novel is an effective thriller and a gorgeous train-crash tragedy, but it is also, on some level, a reading of Hamlet, and I must say it is a reading I very much agree with.
Hayden himself is absolutely stunning, and I could write a whole essay on the way the book draws you into his thoroughly fractured mind, the way his neuroses and thought spirals are depicted, but I don’t want to spoil the experience too much, so I will just say it is both immersive and viscerally *real*, and let that serve as both recommendation and warning. The author has performed a flawless surgical transplant, removing shakespearian ideas about death, the afterlife, and fate and slotting in modern scientific models and medical research in their place, and that change spirals out across Hayden’s thinking patterns in a deeply believable way that reframes the entire premise.
But even with that, in my mind the mark of a truly perfect Hamlet isn’t Hamlet himself, but Horatio and Ophelia. If those two both feel right, you’ve got magic. This book has magic. It’s such a breath of fresh air to see an Ophelia who is allowed to be empowered and human without being over-idealised, and the relationship between Hayden and Horatio knocked the breath out of my lungs more than once. There was a point towards the end where I simply had to put the book down and breathe for a minute before I could go on witnessing it.
For as much as every element of the premise and plot is making me crazy, “
Content Warnings
Graphic: Mental illness, Self harm, Sexual content, Suicidal thoughts, Violence, Medical content, Death of parent, Murder
THE DEATH I GAVE HIM is a locked room retelling of Hamlet; and more, with changes to character that come into themselves, and set the reader up for thrilling story with echoes of its inspiration, but in a voice that is entirely its own.
I love the character of Felicia. She is active, and doesn't hold back. The tension and chemistry between Horatio and Hayden is just a joy to read. Hopefully without giving anything away, some of their encounters reminded me of the elegance of RED SCHOLAR'S WAKE. I especially loved that the Sisyphus formula is itself a metaphor for the grief and death that haunts this work. How do we regenerate, make ourselves whole again from what we have left? Such a great read on so many counts.
I love the character of Felicia. She is active, and doesn't hold back. The tension and chemistry between Horatio and Hayden is just a joy to read. Hopefully without giving anything away, some of their encounters reminded me of the elegance of RED SCHOLAR'S WAKE. I especially loved that the Sisyphus formula is itself a metaphor for the grief and death that haunts this work. How do we regenerate, make ourselves whole again from what we have left? Such a great read on so many counts.