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3.54 AVERAGE
3.54 AVERAGE
dark
emotional
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
personally, i would've knocked hayden's glasses off if given the chance
slow-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
Took me ages to finish. Much like Hamlet, there's a lot of angst coming from a really unlikeable character and the plot is predictable. I did like the mix of formats but ultimately felt this could have been a novella.
dark
emotional
tense
fast-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
Am I glad I read it? Definitely!
Notably, I believe Liu wrote under the assumption that the reader is familiar with the original story, which relieved some of the pressure of this book being a genre Mystery and instead allowed the focus to be on the psychologically messy characters and on the nuances of the near-future reimagining. Liu made some brilliant decisions, and it’s those details that really make this book really fascinating.
Here are my favorite things:
HORATIO. Horatio - the spectator, the outside observer - written as the (surveillance & data interface) AI of the lab where the book’s events take place. I could write an essay on everything Liu has done with this character, INCLUDING the queer yearning!
Liu did some really interesting things with the multimedia format and character POVs. The past tense, reflective tone of Felicia’s chapters. The inhumanly detailed, intimate closeness of Horatio’s present tense POV - and of Hayden’s, whose perspective we only get once his mind has interfaced with Horatio and has thus been stored in Horatio’s interface for future retrieval. Genius!
Liu played up and plays with Hamlet’s obsession with death and mortality and the body so thoroughly, visceral (literally) metaphors included. One of my favorite, and probably one of the most subtle, ways Liu plays with these themes is through the framing of the story: the book has been pieced together by some future history student putting together an undergrad essay. Ultimately, Hayden IS remembered, which is its own sort of immortality. Genius again!
Here are my two complaints:
I love that Felicia got, idk, a whole ass personality, but I can’t say I understand why we spend so much time (more than any other character & more frequently in the second half) in her POV.
I think Horatio was somewhat underutilized. I wish we spent significantly more time in his POV (and, again, don’t quite understand why we didn’t). Also, while I loved the eroticism of the near-possession/body-sharing AI sexy times, I think Liu missed a major erotic opportunity with Horatio’s “body” being the lab’s building itself.
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
sad
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
I’m honestly blown away. This book is absolutely stunning and I definitely will be thinking about it for possibly the rest of time. It’s so good I want to eat it. Everything about it really ticked so many boxes for me, I truly can’t get over it.
I think this is the sort of sci-fi that I do enjoy. It’s very much still grounded in the familiar of what we know, but spooled out in predicting the potential future of our world. I like what Liu had in mind and I love how she took concepts we already have and updated them to fit her view of the world a couple decades into the future. I particularly love how she then included small elements in the footnotes to take us just a step further into the future beyond the events of the books and show a more expansive view of how technology and science has continued to develop. It’s hard to articulate the difference I feel with other sci-fi media I’ve consumed, but this really worked for me.
The style was so fascinating and utterly arresting. Structuring the story as a series of pieces from multiple sources put together as a retelling of the events was so incredibly creative. I love the choices Liu made for which sort of source she wanted to use for which parts, choosing where to add in a lot of depth of emotion and where to leave it in a very objective perspective. It was haunting sometimes when the perspective suddenly was just objective dialogue without any indication even of body language or tone of voice. Everything was so carefully chosen and placed within the narrative and I’m obsessed with it. Plus, Liu’s prose is gorgeous. The way she describes physical feelings and the metaphors she uses that connect to this visceral body and bone sort of theme that she’s woven throughout. It’s so beautiful and impactful. Some of my favorite lines were those metaphors of viscera. Additionally, just the way Liu wrote those POVs. How Felicia's all came from a self reflective look at the events, Hayden's were all written in present tense, the inhuman artificial intelligence perspective of Horatio's. She really managed all of those writing styles so well and made them flow together in a way that seemed so effortless. It was never jarring going between POVs.
I’ve personally only seen Hamlet performed once and I haven’t actually read the play through in one go myself, so I’m not extremely well versed in the story, but I do know enough of it to see the contours of what Liu was building as I went along. Of course I knew the ending going in, and I think it was incredibly effective for Liu to write the book with the assumption that the readers knew. It really aided in the immersion of the story, bringing us in as if we already knew exactly what happened in the labs. Moreover, because the starting point was a presumed familiarity with the bare bones of the play, it really lent itself to how the events unfolded. The knowledge of what would happen next of what it was all building toward really added to the experience for me. Like, even if I didn’t remember details of the play, I still knew enough to realize with a sinking dread how Liu had decided to work in the mother, and I still knew enough to recognize how each of Hayden’s decisions was driving him further into the tragedy. The major point of a tragedy is the knowledge that the hero is doomed from the start and Liu manipulates that so well to add to the tense, anxious atmosphere. Which was further aided by making it this closed parlor mystery setting. SO smart! Tightening the timeline to a single night and forcing us into this one claustrophobic building to really add to the emotions already present in the story itself. It was so well done, made the emotions stand out that much more and feel that much more real. To the point that I was sobbing by the ending chapters. I love it.
My biggest thing, though, is 100% a personal thing. A trope I am totally obsessed with. The whole one character inside another character’s head? Oh my god I could eat that shit up with a SPOON I tell you. And Liu really did everything I love in this case. The sensory details, the possessive feelings, the possession!! I was going absolutely out of my mind in certain sections, like waving my arms and screaming into pillows out of my mind. And she also did a fantastic job of showing both sides of the connection, as well. How each party felt when sharing the mind and body. With the added element of Horatio being inhuman and the details of how he processed physicality and human emotion. I’m so, so, so into that shit and Liu did it so, so, so perfectly for me. This book just had it ALL for me.
I think this is the sort of sci-fi that I do enjoy. It’s very much still grounded in the familiar of what we know, but spooled out in predicting the potential future of our world. I like what Liu had in mind and I love how she took concepts we already have and updated them to fit her view of the world a couple decades into the future. I particularly love how she then included small elements in the footnotes to take us just a step further into the future beyond the events of the books and show a more expansive view of how technology and science has continued to develop. It’s hard to articulate the difference I feel with other sci-fi media I’ve consumed, but this really worked for me.
The style was so fascinating and utterly arresting. Structuring the story as a series of pieces from multiple sources put together as a retelling of the events was so incredibly creative. I love the choices Liu made for which sort of source she wanted to use for which parts, choosing where to add in a lot of depth of emotion and where to leave it in a very objective perspective. It was haunting sometimes when the perspective suddenly was just objective dialogue without any indication even of body language or tone of voice. Everything was so carefully chosen and placed within the narrative and I’m obsessed with it. Plus, Liu’s prose is gorgeous. The way she describes physical feelings and the metaphors she uses that connect to this visceral body and bone sort of theme that she’s woven throughout. It’s so beautiful and impactful. Some of my favorite lines were those metaphors of viscera. Additionally, just the way Liu wrote those POVs. How Felicia's all came from a self reflective look at the events, Hayden's were all written in present tense, the inhuman artificial intelligence perspective of Horatio's. She really managed all of those writing styles so well and made them flow together in a way that seemed so effortless. It was never jarring going between POVs.
I’ve personally only seen Hamlet performed once and I haven’t actually read the play through in one go myself, so I’m not extremely well versed in the story, but I do know enough of it to see the contours of what Liu was building as I went along. Of course I knew the ending going in, and I think it was incredibly effective for Liu to write the book with the assumption that the readers knew. It really aided in the immersion of the story, bringing us in as if we already knew exactly what happened in the labs. Moreover, because the starting point was a presumed familiarity with the bare bones of the play, it really lent itself to how the events unfolded. The knowledge of what would happen next of what it was all building toward really added to the experience for me. Like, even if I didn’t remember details of the play, I still knew enough to realize with a sinking dread how Liu had decided to work in the mother, and I still knew enough to recognize how each of Hayden’s decisions was driving him further into the tragedy. The major point of a tragedy is the knowledge that the hero is doomed from the start and Liu manipulates that so well to add to the tense, anxious atmosphere. Which was further aided by making it this closed parlor mystery setting. SO smart! Tightening the timeline to a single night and forcing us into this one claustrophobic building to really add to the emotions already present in the story itself. It was so well done, made the emotions stand out that much more and feel that much more real. To the point that I was sobbing by the ending chapters. I love it.
My biggest thing, though, is 100% a personal thing. A trope I am totally obsessed with. The whole one character inside another character’s head? Oh my god I could eat that shit up with a SPOON I tell you. And Liu really did everything I love in this case. The sensory details, the possessive feelings, the possession!! I was going absolutely out of my mind in certain sections, like waving my arms and screaming into pillows out of my mind. And she also did a fantastic job of showing both sides of the connection, as well. How each party felt when sharing the mind and body. With the added element of Horatio being inhuman and the details of how he processed physicality and human emotion. I’m so, so, so into that shit and Liu did it so, so, so perfectly for me. This book just had it ALL for me.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Body horror, Confinement, Death, Gore, Gun violence, Self harm, Suicidal thoughts, Blood, Grief, Murder, Injury/Injury detail
dark
mysterious
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Did I like it? No
Do I recommend it? No
Do I recommend it? No
Favorite Quote
Hayden meant to master death. He meant to chain it up like a prisoner, so that he could cheat it if he wanted, if he tried hard enough. I couldn’t tell if he was doing it out of a deluded sense of grandeur, an overly ambitious belief in his own capabilities, or if he was doing it out of fear. (105)
Positives
I like how Liu explores the concept of body sharing in this novel and their novella, If Found Return to Hell.
Making im/mortality the central theme by placing the Hamlet retelling in the future and having the characters be scientists is interesting. The epistolary structure of the story upends narrative analysis of the original play (where Horatio is the sole storytelling authority of the tale). We also get more of Ophelia and Horatio in general.
I was very intrigued by Horatio (and his relationship with Hayden) and that interest was what got me through the novel.
Negatives
Unfortunately, for me the negatives outweighed the positives of this reading experience. The characters of this story read similarly to those of The Fall of the House of Usher, but without the character focus? Like the narrative focuses on Hayden and Felicia primarily but there isn’t any development. They stay pretty much the same, so we are spending time with their angst and it gets tiring. The cast is so small that there was time to flesh out all of the characters to make the story more compelling.
Several lines of description are overly flowery and repetitive. There is a lot of medical gore in general, but it’s also used in comparisons and descriptions. This writing style, combined with the stagnation of the characters and unclear plot trajectory had me bored and/or confused about why the characters did what they did.
dark
mysterious
reflective
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
dark
mysterious
sad
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
dark
emotional
reflective
tense
fast-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
This retelling of Shakespeare's Hamlet is so good. Life and death, murder and suicide, what it means to live forever, what is the cost.... all interwoven together brilliantly. Liu takes the foundation of the play and puts their own spin on it for this technological age.
not really sure this needed to be a hamlet retelling? the ai sex was fun