Scan barcode
A review by misosoupcup
The Death I Gave Him by Em X. Liu
challenging
dark
emotional
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
okay this book altered my brain chemistry!!
a great near-future modern day interpretation of Hamlet, with a sci-fi'ish setting, told through one of the most smartest framing devices ever. Not a single page is wasted. Great character study since everyone knows "who-dun-it" or if you haven't read it in middle school/high school like I have, you can just look up the original play on wikipedia.
original themes in the play dialed up to 100, and expertly placed in a modern context. Hayden is my blorbo now. maybe if i read the play i would feel more attached to felicia (equivalent of ophelia mixed with laertes).
I think the advertising as a "queer retelling" is interesting. I do have to agree with some people that The Death I Gave Him is not a strict queer retelling in the way that it was marketed, or how other contemporary retellings of famous pieces of lit are "queer retellings". In addition, Horatio doesn't have a body, he is an AI, and doesn't really have a body to assign a gender to even though he thinks of himself as a "he". i think the ethics of treating AI as a conscious being is an interesting problem to chew on, especially how it is presented in this book.
people were weirded out by the two sex scenes, but honestly i wanted the book to lean more into the strangeness. it was compelling and hot to ME! it was interesting, strange, and unfamiliar! and still i felt the passion! i saw some reviews questioning whether Horatio and Hayden actually loved each other and i just have to shake my head. yes, horatio is kind of a caretaker of hayden in a sense, but is that not a part of what love is? and its not like horatio is always letting hayden's bad habits slide. And hayden reciprocates, he is trying to salvage what is left. i would argue that this is a queer retelling in the sense that the queerness is not found in gender, but rather in the queering of the relationship to the body. is it possible to love someone non-corporeal? someone who may or may not have consciousness but can mimic it? is there intimacy and sexual fervor in the artificiality of it all?
I could totally see this being adapted by HBO or Netflix potentially. each episode would start off with bursts of clips from the trial, surveillance footage, digital scans of transcripts, with interludes from Felicia and Paul's pagers, or interviews, logs from Horatio, documentary footage History Channel style.
in conclusion: this book ate and i was a starving man searching for bread.
a great near-future modern day interpretation of Hamlet, with a sci-fi'ish setting, told through one of the most smartest framing devices ever. Not a single page is wasted. Great character study since everyone knows "who-dun-it" or if you haven't read it in middle school/high school like I have, you can just look up the original play on wikipedia.
original themes in the play dialed up to 100, and expertly placed in a modern context. Hayden is my blorbo now. maybe if i read the play i would feel more attached to felicia (equivalent of ophelia mixed with laertes).
I think the advertising as a "queer retelling" is interesting. I do have to agree with some people that The Death I Gave Him is not a strict queer retelling in the way that it was marketed, or how other contemporary retellings of famous pieces of lit are "queer retellings". In addition, Horatio doesn't have a body, he is an AI, and doesn't really have a body to assign a gender to even though he thinks of himself as a "he". i think the ethics of treating AI as a conscious being is an interesting problem to chew on, especially how it is presented in this book.
people were weirded out by the two sex scenes, but honestly i wanted the book to lean more into the strangeness. it was compelling and hot to ME! it was interesting, strange, and unfamiliar! and still i felt the passion! i saw some reviews questioning whether Horatio and Hayden actually loved each other and i just have to shake my head. yes, horatio is kind of a caretaker of hayden in a sense, but is that not a part of what love is? and its not like horatio is always letting hayden's bad habits slide. And hayden reciprocates, he is trying to salvage what is left. i would argue that this is a queer retelling in the sense that the queerness is not found in gender, but rather in the queering of the relationship to the body. is it possible to love someone non-corporeal? someone who may or may not have consciousness but can mimic it? is there intimacy and sexual fervor in the artificiality of it all?
I could totally see this being adapted by HBO or Netflix potentially. each episode would start off with bursts of clips from the trial, surveillance footage, digital scans of transcripts, with interludes from Felicia and Paul's pagers, or interviews, logs from Horatio, documentary footage History Channel style.
in conclusion: this book ate and i was a starving man searching for bread.