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A review by jeckehecke
The Death I Gave Him by Em X. Liu
4.0
*I received an ARC via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. Thanks for the free book.*
"The Death I Gave Him" is a queer, scifi-ish "Hamlet" retelling, which seeks to reconstruct (retelling of a retelling, nice!) what happened in the laboratory after Hayden (Hamlet) finds his father's corpse. If you know "Hamlet" well, as I do, you expect certain plot twists but you can never be sure if or how the story will unfold. The novel also plays, partly, into the found fragment trope and overall I was quite entertaining. The entire book is very violent and dark and none of the characters are likeable at all. I was very entertained by the book and found it very enjoyable. Especially Horatio was fascinating but I have to admit that some things did not work for me: a) The scientist's son who has no real qualifications but somehow became a prodigy? b) The ending which left some questions open c) The World Building which was either unexplained or just plopped in (apart from the fancy research facility) and also b) Horatio in connection to world building.
But I enjoyed this, so 4 stars
"The Death I Gave Him" is a queer, scifi-ish "Hamlet" retelling, which seeks to reconstruct (retelling of a retelling, nice!) what happened in the laboratory after Hayden (Hamlet) finds his father's corpse. If you know "Hamlet" well, as I do, you expect certain plot twists but you can never be sure if or how the story will unfold. The novel also plays, partly, into the found fragment trope and overall I was quite entertaining. The entire book is very violent and dark and none of the characters are likeable at all. I was very entertained by the book and found it very enjoyable. Especially Horatio was fascinating but I have to admit that some things did not work for me: a) The scientist's son who has no real qualifications but somehow became a prodigy? b) The ending which left some questions open c) The World Building which was either unexplained or just plopped in (apart from the fancy research facility) and also b) Horatio in connection to world building.
But I enjoyed this, so 4 stars