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A review by bogwitchreads
The Death I Gave Him by Em X. Liu
3.5
I thought this book was so well done. I particularly loved the structure (I love footnotes and metanarratives), and I thought it suited a Hamlet retelling very well. Weirdly, though, I have to say that, while I would probably not have read this book if it weren't Hamlet (scifi that goes really into the ethics of the science and what it could mean for the future is generally Too Scary for me), I actually think I would have liked it more in the end if it hadn't been Hamlet.
I fully admit this is mostly a me problem because I have spent (and continue to spend) way more time thinking about Hamlet than most people, but I do tend to struggle with retellings of stories that I love when the author interprets the characters differently than I do. Again, this is a me problem! Em X. Liu's interpretations are not bad or wrong, they're simply different than my own, and I get stuck on that. Because of that, the book started to lose me a bit later on because I just kept thinking, "well, that's not how I would have done that." (I particularly struggle with Ophelia because I feel like everyone always thinks they have to make her a completely different person with different plotlines in order to make her interesting, and I don't agree, but I've literally never been convinced by an Ophelia in a Hamlet retelling, so that is very much not exclusive to this book).
On a less-specific-to-me note, I also think the book suffered a little bit by being a retelling because it would treat something as a mystery and then a big reveal, but like...I've read Hamlet. I figured that out a hundred pages before you even introduced that mystery. Why are we pretending? If you aren't super familiar with Hamlet (or don't mind being able to predict plot points by being familiar with the source material, which, frankly, is a category I fall into), though, that's obviously not going to be an issue.
I'm sorry this review was all about Hamlet, but I have yet to figure out how to talk about retellings without doing that so it is what it is. I liked this book. I would read it again. I think I will like Em X. Liu's novella more.
I fully admit this is mostly a me problem because I have spent (and continue to spend) way more time thinking about Hamlet than most people, but I do tend to struggle with retellings of stories that I love when the author interprets the characters differently than I do. Again, this is a me problem! Em X. Liu's interpretations are not bad or wrong, they're simply different than my own, and I get stuck on that. Because of that, the book started to lose me a bit later on because I just kept thinking, "well, that's not how I would have done that." (I particularly struggle with Ophelia because I feel like everyone always thinks they have to make her a completely different person with different plotlines in order to make her interesting, and I don't agree, but I've literally never been convinced by an Ophelia in a Hamlet retelling, so that is very much not exclusive to this book).
On a less-specific-to-me note, I also think the book suffered a little bit by being a retelling because it would treat something as a mystery and then a big reveal, but like...I've read Hamlet. I figured that out a hundred pages before you even introduced that mystery. Why are we pretending? If you aren't super familiar with Hamlet (or don't mind being able to predict plot points by being familiar with the source material, which, frankly, is a category I fall into), though, that's obviously not going to be an issue.
I'm sorry this review was all about Hamlet, but I have yet to figure out how to talk about retellings without doing that so it is what it is. I liked this book. I would read it again. I think I will like Em X. Liu's novella more.