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A review by mesal
Immortal Longings by Chloe Gong
adventurous
dark
medium-paced
- Loveable characters? No
1.0
This retelling of <i>Antony and Cleopatra</i> is excellent in the sense that it remains true to the principal facets of the original. Shakespeare's version is tedious, with needless jumps between points of view that prolong the narrative and make the audience feel as if the story will never end; Gong's version is much the same, though its monotony can be ascribed to her choice of omniscient narrator, strongly decelerating the story's progression with constant detours into worldbuilding and character exposition. Cleopatra's Antony is lackluster and frankly a little soulless when compared to the Antony of <i>Julius Caesar</i>; the sliver of personality that Anton is able to call his own is overshadowed at every turn by the narrator's insistence on reminding readers of his matchless body jumping ability and tragic backstory. The one major aspect where this novel deviates from the play that inspired it, really, is in the depiction of the relationship between our two focal characters. Cleopatra and Antony's obsessive codependence and shared passion are all but lost in these their modern counterparts, with Calla and Anton's love story sputtering to a start oddly in the middle of the book and remaining unconvincing through to the very end.
<i>The Hunger Games</i> being a comp also makes perfect sense to me. <i>Immortal Longings</i> introduces a city with discontented citizens that participate almost yearly in something referred to only as "the games," where eighty-eight citizens battle to the death in order to win riches beyond their wildest dreams, money that can pull them out of their bleak living situations. The games begin with something known as the Daqun, where—in a scene extraordinarily similar to the Cornucopia bloodbath—contestants gather inside the coliseum and wait for palace guards to drop sacks of gold and wristband chips from the throne room balcony, effectively marking the commencement of the fighting. Contestants then murder each other in an attempt to get their hands on at least one of these sacks before slinking away and looking for weapons they can use later on against their remaining competitors. There is a moment very near the end of the novel whereCalla and Anton, in the final fight to their deaths, choose instead to let go of their weapons and embrace each other, reminding any reader familiar with the source material of Peeta and Katniss' final stand in the 74th annual Hunger Games . Without giving Collins' series the credit that it deserved, Gong would have run the risk of having her novel called a ripoff. Thankfully the political system and socioeconomic issues <i>Immortal Longings</i> purports to discuss are so appallingly designed and crudely executed that all similarities to <i>The Hunger Games</i> begin and end with the existence of the games themselves.
I read <a href="https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/kim_07_22/">this short story</a> a few months ago and because of it, I was unable to take the last 30% of <i>Immortal Longings</i> seriously. Perhaps the 90s noir subgenre is by nature overdramatic; I wouldn't know, since I haven't read or watched much of it. What I do know now is that Gong's interpretation of it wasn't to my taste at all. The sly references to dialogue from <i>Antony and Cleopatra</i> as well as the unexpected last few lines of this novel may have piqued my curiosity, but I don't think an interesting ending is enough to warrant my recommending this book to others—or even considering reading its sequel myself.
<i>The Hunger Games</i> being a comp also makes perfect sense to me. <i>Immortal Longings</i> introduces a city with discontented citizens that participate almost yearly in something referred to only as "the games," where eighty-eight citizens battle to the death in order to win riches beyond their wildest dreams, money that can pull them out of their bleak living situations. The games begin with something known as the Daqun, where—in a scene extraordinarily similar to the Cornucopia bloodbath—contestants gather inside the coliseum and wait for palace guards to drop sacks of gold and wristband chips from the throne room balcony, effectively marking the commencement of the fighting. Contestants then murder each other in an attempt to get their hands on at least one of these sacks before slinking away and looking for weapons they can use later on against their remaining competitors. There is a moment very near the end of the novel where
I read <a href="https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/kim_07_22/">this short story</a> a few months ago and because of it, I was unable to take the last 30% of <i>Immortal Longings</i> seriously. Perhaps the 90s noir subgenre is by nature overdramatic; I wouldn't know, since I haven't read or watched much of it. What I do know now is that Gong's interpretation of it wasn't to my taste at all. The sly references to dialogue from <i>Antony and Cleopatra</i> as well as the unexpected last few lines of this novel may have piqued my curiosity, but I don't think an interesting ending is enough to warrant my recommending this book to others—or even considering reading its sequel myself.