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3.54 AVERAGE
3.54 AVERAGE
sometimes when I read a retelling i am so excited about it because what is the author going to do? what is going to happen! it feels like reading a whole new work of fiction. this felt like horatio/hamelt AI fanfiction that was so predictable and boring I can't believe I finished it. seriously, what the fuck was up with hayden (hamlet) and horatio mind fucking? completely irrelevant to the plot the first time it happened and like. why are y'all fucking in this situation what the fuck? it was billed as lgbt and just really wasn't, sorry. an AI identifying as male does not make an lgbt book! I'm going to rewatch the Lion King because at least that has ghosts.
Much better than the other Hamlet retelling I read recently. It properly empowered and developed Ophelia's and Gertrude's characters in a way that didn't feel pandering.
I didn't have a very strong sense of the geography in the lab, which for a locked room mystery was kind of disappointing. I was also sometimes getting lost in the action
I didn't have a very strong sense of the geography in the lab, which for a locked room mystery was kind of disappointing. I was also sometimes getting lost in the action
I enjoyed this book so much that I feel like I have to say something about it, but it's difficult to know what to say. If nothing else, I look forward to reading it again so that, like the characters themselves suggest, I can see new things in it.
The way this is written is so gorgeous. I'm skeptical when a book declares itself to be lyrical, but The Death I Gave Him more than earns it. Usually, interacting with media that's so much about death (books, games, podcasts, whatever) comes with increased anxiety about death for me, but there was something so grounding about having a main character who was visibly going through that with me, visibly having anxiety in both his mind and his body. I hope I never get over how this book keeps the focus on the physicality of the body.
And, respectfully, Hayden and Horatio are one of the gayest things I've ever seen.
The way this is written is so gorgeous. I'm skeptical when a book declares itself to be lyrical, but The Death I Gave Him more than earns it. Usually, interacting with media that's so much about death (books, games, podcasts, whatever) comes with increased anxiety about death for me, but there was something so grounding about having a main character who was visibly going through that with me, visibly having anxiety in both his mind and his body. I hope I never get over how this book keeps the focus on the physicality of the body.
And, respectfully, Hayden and Horatio are one of the gayest things I've ever seen.
Spoiler
As a millennial-aged queer, I worry sometimes that the sort of queer tragedies I am used to, because writers used to have to bury their gays, are too out of fashion and I'll never see another good one. Not because I think there's anything wrong with a story that celebrates queer happiness (far from it), but because sometimes I want to sit with a bittersweet ending. On that front, I'm glad to see this bisexual disaster and his AI boyfriend at their messy ending, with the implied possibility of a reunion someday, eventually.
dark
emotional
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
it was pretty strong! idk if it lived up to my expectations because the concept is incredibly cool, but i generally still enjoyed reading it. as usual, obsessed with a sentient ai and also gay people so a win for me. i thought i knew the plot of hamlet better than i did, so i feel like i for sure missed some references and allusions, but it was still strong without me knowing the hamlet lore. honestly i just don’t really have very strong feelings on this one in any direction
this is a dumb criticism because it’s literally a retelling but the plot felt a little boring and predictable? i also had problems keeping the characters straight even though there’s like five total
this is a dumb criticism because it’s literally a retelling but the plot felt a little boring and predictable? i also had problems keeping the characters straight even though there’s like five total
Content Warnings
Graphic: Self harm, Suicidal thoughts, Violence, Blood, Suicide attempt, Death of parent, Murder
Moderate: Gun violence, Mental illness
challenging
dark
emotional
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
Content Warnings
Graphic: Body horror, Death, Mental illness, Panic attacks/disorders, Suicidal thoughts, Violence, Blood, Death of parent, Murder
words cannot explain how boring this was
emotional
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
TW: self harm, suicidal ideation, death/murder, blood, body horror, mental illness, parental death, (gun) violence, sexual content
I’ve been in a bit of a reading slump, and The Death I Gave Him may have just pulled me out of it. This audiobook is a little over a short 10 hours. As a sci-fi, thriller mystery, it’s certainly at the fringes of genres I typically gravitate toward, but I really enjoyed this.
The book is pitched as a lyrical, queer sci-fi retelling of Shakespeare's Hamlet. I went in with the expectation that this would be just alright–after all, Hamlet has been done time and time again. I will say, though, that I certainly was not expecting anything like this.
To begin, I must praise the format of this story–The Death I Gave Him is told by an unnamed narrator as a compilation of various types of sources. Our narrator pieces together “fictionalized” narrative (written based on their own presumptions about how interactions may have gone based on the extensive research they have done about the 14-hour lockdown), transcripts from pagers, translated audio/video sources, interview snippets, journal entries, a book published afterward about the events, and letters.
I really enjoyed this pieced-together style of storytelling. Our unnamed narrator also includes footnotes throughout the story, which really enhances the experience and does a smooth job of framing the story that we’re reading. The storytelling format was really clever and absolutely served advance the story in ways that would otherwise have been difficult; the various sources used to build a final product also lends itself very well to diversity the mode of storytelling in a unique way.
As an aside, the audiobook handles the shifts exceptionally well. I found it very easy to follow the type of source we were engaging in, and the unnamed narrator’s footnotes felt like natural interjections that the audiobook narrator includes seamlessly.
As is to be expected. Em X. Liu handles the central themes of Hamlet in The Death I Gave Him: revenge, madness, reality vs. appearances, and grief.
"Do you want to live because you want to live or because you're afraid to die?"
Hayden Lichfield, the main character, plays as Hamlet. After the murder of his father, he undertakes a revenge plot against the killer, his uncle. As the story progresses, he gradually becomes increasingly disconnected from reality and consumed with the desire for revenge in the name of his father.
Hayden was clearly already somewhat unhinged when the story starts, which certainly exacerbates the problem in a moment of crisis. There is no question here about whether Hayden was sane: he struggled with mental illness long before the murder of his father, and that only gets worse.
As he continues on his quest for revenge, he discovers how much of the lab (and subsequently, his father) was a mystery to him. As he continues to break, his illusion of what and who his father, the Sisyphus project, and Elsinore lab as a whole actually were.
Hayden also has a very close relationship with the lab’s AI, Horatio. Liu does a great retelling of this relationship that’s queer and strange all at once.I do wish that the relationship were a bit more developed, however, because it felt like we were being dropped into the middle of something already in motion. Liu writes the relationship in a way that Hayden and Horatio are one, nearly unified entity as a result of having grown up together. That type of relationship lends itself to the deeply intimate symbiosis the two characters have, but I think it could have been better fleshed out.
Furthermore, I also felt like Horatio as a character wasn’t as well fleshed out as Hayden and Felicia. This does a disservice to the queer retelling of this relationship, I think. I understand that Horatio is literally an AI, but he [yes, he, not it] was able to participate in other human characteristics. If Horatio is able to act on erotic and empathetic impulses, I see no reason as to why the he couldn’t have been built out to reflect the same degree of complexity as our other characters. Eroticism of AI just doesn’t seem to have the same depth in terms of themes as the other main characters here.
Felicia was a wonderful rewrite of Ophelia. Felicia was a really well-rounded character who actually got to have a voice in the story: her interviews and essay were used as main elements of the storytelling, and we were really able to engage with her rage and guilt.
Overall, I think this was a really interesting project. I appreciated that the book seemed to focus more on the character study of “who will lose it first” rather than the very predictable mystery.
I’ve been in a bit of a reading slump, and The Death I Gave Him may have just pulled me out of it. This audiobook is a little over a short 10 hours. As a sci-fi, thriller mystery, it’s certainly at the fringes of genres I typically gravitate toward, but I really enjoyed this.
The book is pitched as a lyrical, queer sci-fi retelling of Shakespeare's Hamlet. I went in with the expectation that this would be just alright–after all, Hamlet has been done time and time again. I will say, though, that I certainly was not expecting anything like this.
To begin, I must praise the format of this story–The Death I Gave Him is told by an unnamed narrator as a compilation of various types of sources. Our narrator pieces together “fictionalized” narrative (written based on their own presumptions about how interactions may have gone based on the extensive research they have done about the 14-hour lockdown), transcripts from pagers, translated audio/video sources, interview snippets, journal entries, a book published afterward about the events, and letters.
I really enjoyed this pieced-together style of storytelling. Our unnamed narrator also includes footnotes throughout the story, which really enhances the experience and does a smooth job of framing the story that we’re reading. The storytelling format was really clever and absolutely served advance the story in ways that would otherwise have been difficult; the various sources used to build a final product also lends itself very well to diversity the mode of storytelling in a unique way.
As an aside, the audiobook handles the shifts exceptionally well. I found it very easy to follow the type of source we were engaging in, and the unnamed narrator’s footnotes felt like natural interjections that the audiobook narrator includes seamlessly.
As is to be expected. Em X. Liu handles the central themes of Hamlet in The Death I Gave Him: revenge, madness, reality vs. appearances, and grief.
"Do you want to live because you want to live or because you're afraid to die?"
Hayden Lichfield, the main character, plays as Hamlet. After the murder of his father, he undertakes a revenge plot against the killer, his uncle. As the story progresses, he gradually becomes increasingly disconnected from reality and consumed with the desire for revenge in the name of his father.
Hayden was clearly already somewhat unhinged when the story starts, which certainly exacerbates the problem in a moment of crisis. There is no question here about whether Hayden was sane: he struggled with mental illness long before the murder of his father, and that only gets worse.
As he continues on his quest for revenge, he discovers how much of the lab (and subsequently, his father) was a mystery to him. As he continues to break, his illusion of what and who his father, the Sisyphus project, and Elsinore lab as a whole actually were.
Hayden also has a very close relationship with the lab’s AI, Horatio. Liu does a great retelling of this relationship that’s queer and strange all at once.
Furthermore, I also felt like Horatio as a character wasn’t as well fleshed out as Hayden and Felicia. This does a disservice to the queer retelling of this relationship, I think. I understand that Horatio is literally an AI, but he [yes, he, not it] was able to participate in other human characteristics. If Horatio is able to act on erotic and empathetic impulses, I see no reason as to why the he couldn’t have been built out to reflect the same degree of complexity as our other characters. Eroticism of AI just doesn’t seem to have the same depth in terms of themes as the other main characters here.
Felicia was a wonderful rewrite of Ophelia. Felicia was a really well-rounded character who actually got to have a voice in the story: her interviews and essay were used as main elements of the storytelling, and we were really able to engage with her rage and guilt.
Overall, I think this was a really interesting project. I appreciated that the book seemed to focus more on the character study of “who will lose it first” rather than the very predictable mystery.
dark
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Wasn't grabbing my attention. Felt like it was so heavily character driven it was too slow/I was losing the plot.
i really like this, but it’s nearly due to go back to my library and trying to read it quickly before returning it is hurting my brain