You need to sign in or sign up before continuing.
Take a photo of a barcode or cover
3.54 AVERAGE
3.54 AVERAGE
Likely would have been better to read rather than listen to this.
challenging
emotional
mysterious
sad
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
3.5 stars.
Hamlet was never one of my favourite of Shakespeare's plays. It was assigned reading in school, and I found it tedious and thoroughly irritating: by early into the play I was yelling at Hamlet for harming Ophelia and though I don't condone murder, I wanted Hamlet to just get on and kill his uncle.
But, much as I disliked Hammy, I was intrigued by Em X. Liu's take on this play. And it's good. Moving the setting into the future and creating a locked room mystery within a bio-engineering company doing some pretty esoteric work, Liu has Hayden/Hammy find his father's brutally murdered corpse. Hayden immediately secures their highly specialized research and a formula for a serum he and his father were developing to bring people back from the dead, before notifying others in the company about his father's murder.
Hayden's uncle orders the building's AI Horatio to lock down the facility, trapping everyone within and cutting off their access to the outside world while he attempts to determine who stole his brother's research after killing him. A highly placed official in the company and his daughter Felicia are also locked in, accidentally. Hayden's uncle, suspecting Hayden of something, has Felicia work with Hayden to find some answers. (Felicia and Hayden has a short relationship in the past, and Felicia left him when she realized that Hayden would always put his work at the company before anything else.)
Through a series of violent incidents and exposure of several lies, Felicia discovers what Hayden is protecting (the serum), as well as possible evidence of corporate espionage. Things don't end well for several characters.
Liu's change of setting to a research facility cut off from the outside world creates a nice sense of claustrophobia and tension, and it's pretty obvious that someone within murdered Hayden's father. (It's not a surprise if you've read the play, of course, as well as a secret motive that emerges as the story progresses.)
The author's Horatio is a wonderful character, utterly devoted to Hayden, even while Horatio questions Hayden's actions and motives. Artificial intelligence (AI) Horatio is a wonderful version of the character, having the personal strength and compassion that Hayden lacks, and serves as both lover and conscience to the scientist. Horatio is probably the one truly sympathetic character in the whole book.
Liu's Ophelia as Felicia is what I wanted from the original: a ferocious, smart woman, who even with the terrible shocks she experiences over the course of her investigation, doesn't crumple and give up. In fact, she takes no crap from anyone, most especially from Hayden. She figures out what is really happening at the company amongst its Executive, and isn't impressed. She also has a pretty clear idea of what she'll tolerate and what she won't, and makes sure she's dealt with fairly by everyone else. I loved her.
The prose dragged a little in parts, but this wasn't a big concern. Overall, I liked this, and look forward to what Liu does next.
Thank you to Netgalley and to Rebellion for this ARC in exchange for my review.
Hamlet was never one of my favourite of Shakespeare's plays. It was assigned reading in school, and I found it tedious and thoroughly irritating: by early into the play I was yelling at Hamlet for harming Ophelia and though I don't condone murder, I wanted Hamlet to just get on and kill his uncle.
But, much as I disliked Hammy, I was intrigued by Em X. Liu's take on this play. And it's good. Moving the setting into the future and creating a locked room mystery within a bio-engineering company doing some pretty esoteric work, Liu has Hayden/Hammy find his father's brutally murdered corpse. Hayden immediately secures their highly specialized research and a formula for a serum he and his father were developing to bring people back from the dead, before notifying others in the company about his father's murder.
Hayden's uncle orders the building's AI Horatio to lock down the facility, trapping everyone within and cutting off their access to the outside world while he attempts to determine who stole his brother's research after killing him. A highly placed official in the company and his daughter Felicia are also locked in, accidentally. Hayden's uncle, suspecting Hayden of something, has Felicia work with Hayden to find some answers. (Felicia and Hayden has a short relationship in the past, and Felicia left him when she realized that Hayden would always put his work at the company before anything else.)
Through a series of violent incidents and exposure of several lies, Felicia discovers what Hayden is protecting (the serum), as well as possible evidence of corporate espionage. Things don't end well for several characters.
Liu's change of setting to a research facility cut off from the outside world creates a nice sense of claustrophobia and tension, and it's pretty obvious that someone within murdered Hayden's father. (It's not a surprise if you've read the play, of course, as well as a secret motive that emerges as the story progresses.)
The author's Horatio is a wonderful character, utterly devoted to Hayden, even while Horatio questions Hayden's actions and motives. Artificial intelligence (AI) Horatio is a wonderful version of the character, having the personal strength and compassion that Hayden lacks, and serves as both lover and conscience to the scientist. Horatio is probably the one truly sympathetic character in the whole book.
Liu's Ophelia as Felicia is what I wanted from the original: a ferocious, smart woman, who even with the terrible shocks she experiences over the course of her investigation, doesn't crumple and give up. In fact, she takes no crap from anyone, most especially from Hayden. She figures out what is really happening at the company amongst its Executive, and isn't impressed. She also has a pretty clear idea of what she'll tolerate and what she won't, and makes sure she's dealt with fairly by everyone else. I loved her.
The prose dragged a little in parts, but this wasn't a big concern. Overall, I liked this, and look forward to what Liu does next.
Thank you to Netgalley and to Rebellion for this ARC in exchange for my review.
I can't keep on with this. I hate Felicia as a character (or a cardboard cutout of one, with one personality trait, that being Angry At Hayden All The Time For No Good Reasons Ever) but especially as an Ophelia parallel (not that she is one, really, at all). It's especially grating that her narrative is brought in via a personal essay that she wrote looking back on the events of the novel, written in that particular self-indulgent, self-obsessed style that sooooo many personal essays from the past handful of years use. I hate the overwritten melodrama that clogs up the whisper-thin plot and slows it down to a overindulgent crawl. I don't care about any of the characters. Almost halfway through and I'm still not sure why this is a Hamlet retelling at all, because none of the plot points besides the inciting incident, nor any of the themes in general, are involved in the first 40% of TDIGH. I give up, I'm exhausted, I'm done, I wanted to read the human/AI sex scenes to see how it was handled but I don't even think I'm going to try to find them, because I simply Do Not Care That Much.
Engrossing. After a murder, the high tech lab facility it happened in is locked down with the killer still in the building. The surviving son, his uncle, his ex, her father, and an intern are the only ones in the building besides the site's operating system, Horatio.
dark
reflective
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
dark
emotional
mysterious
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
4.5 stars
definitely a page turner, some of the stylistic choices weren’t my favorite (formatting of certain chapters for example) but really enjoyable retelling of hamlet. the hamlet/horatio plotline was great, and i liked the revised ending compared to the original play and ophelia (“felicia”) getting a more fair ending for herself
definitely a page turner, some of the stylistic choices weren’t my favorite (formatting of certain chapters for example) but really enjoyable retelling of hamlet. the hamlet/horatio plotline was great, and i liked the revised ending compared to the original play and ophelia (“felicia”) getting a more fair ending for herself
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
tense
fast-paced