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A review by reverienne
These Violent Delights by Chloe Gong
Did not finish book. Stopped at 3%.
The introduction to the monster was okay, even though a part of the scene was heavily lifted from Shakespeare which... is understandable, yes, but it seemed a bit lazy to go for such a 1 to 1 interpretation of the play? Ironically enough, it was the best part of the novel.
Anyway, the reasons I quit were thus:
- the author feels horribly naive about the gang life which in a story set in a gang setting is an immediate dealbreaker (a cop intervening in a gang fight? please. does this man have a death wish?),
- once you get to Chapter 1, it becomes clear that the author just... can't write anything that requires a substantial amount of dialogues. The dialogues were stiff and boring. The observations interspersed between them were so trivial and dull as to render them positively redundant. Was the editor present? I wonder just how short the novel would be if it was rewritten without all this padding,
- Rosalind has a twin sister whose name is... Kathleen. Thank you for ruining the immersion immediately. To be clear, I have no problem with there being an extra character or this extra character being trans. It's the name that sucks and is unforgivable.
A pity because I was hyped for this book for many reasons, but I don't want to waste my precious reading time on a book that sucks - and sucks in a boring way.
Anyway, the reasons I quit were thus:
- the author feels horribly naive about the gang life which in a story set in a gang setting is an immediate dealbreaker (a cop intervening in a gang fight? please. does this man have a death wish?),
- once you get to Chapter 1, it becomes clear that the author just... can't write anything that requires a substantial amount of dialogues. The dialogues were stiff and boring. The observations interspersed between them were so trivial and dull as to render them positively redundant. Was the editor present? I wonder just how short the novel would be if it was rewritten without all this padding,
- Rosalind has a twin sister whose name is... Kathleen. Thank you for ruining the immersion immediately. To be clear, I have no problem with there being an extra character or this extra character being trans. It's the name that sucks and is unforgivable.
A pity because I was hyped for this book for many reasons, but I don't want to waste my precious reading time on a book that sucks - and sucks in a boring way.