The Death I Gave Him

I love sci fi, and I love Hamlet, so I was really hoping/expecting to like this. But it was just...annoying. There were good aspects but those were mostly the moments where the characters' internal monologues felt most directly lifted from Hamlet. I kept thinking “this would be better if it was more like Hamlet.” Because despite drawing from a source with very nuanced and deep characters, the characters in this felt flat. Their motivations didn't really make sense, and often the reasons they didn't make sense were because of keeping some aspects of the source material and discarding others. For example, in the play Hamlet kills R&G at least in part because he feels they have betrayed him. But in this adaptation, he never really had any connection to their stand-in character so his killing of that character makes no real sense. Also his whole motivation for revenge on his uncle makes way less sense in a modern academic/research context. These are not members of a royal family constantly embroiled in bloody wars and conflicts. These are researchers. It just didn't feel believable that he'd jump so quickly to murder.

The “action” scenes are all chaotic in a way that makes them really hard to follow, and sometimes have continuity errors? I.e. a character drops her gun on the ground dramatically and then in the very next scene is “still holding her gun.” Also the way it is narrated from multiple points of view does not really work as it is really repetitive. We just don't need to hear the same info from multiple perspectives... it also felt like half of this book was just the characters running around to different-but-for-all-intents-and-purposes-identical rooms, getting blood on the floor, and knocking things over. For a “locked room mystery” they sure did spend a lot of time switching rooms for no reason.

I've also seen other people commenting that it doesn't make sense to write a mystery based on Hamlet because we already know what happens/who the killer is/etc. And that's a good point. But I think it's even more than that, because some of the major plot points in Hamlet are not used in this, so I found myself wondering/anticipating how they were going to handle this or that plot point...and then said plot point would just simply not occur. Meanwhile, others felt shoehorned in.

Also, yes it is cool that the author decided to make the Ophelia stand-in character have more screen time than Ophelia does but did she have to be so annoying and obtuse? I saw another review saying she seemed like a really generic girlboss character and I so agree. Original Ophelia was cleverer and more interesting, she just had the unfortunate luck to be living in the 1600s (or whenever we think Hamlet takes place). It sort of felt like the author did not understand the character of Ophelia, and the ways that in the source material she is explicitly subversive and calls others out on their hypocrisy. Yes, she lacks agency and that is something that a modern retelling could play with. But they didn't even try to use the interesting aspects of the original character (of which there are many) to base her new version on (and they did do this reasonably well with the other characters).

Safe to say the Lion King is still the best genre-shifted Hamlet adaptation

Very interesting retelling! Loved the gay robot

I will forget this entirely in a week

really wanted to enjoy this more than i did. i think maybe my main gripe with it, and the reason i had a hard time really getting into it, isn???t even the story itself but the way it was told.

the reasoning behind the story being made up out of fragments pulled from different characters??? experiences/stories is that this is all being penned up by a scientist who became themselves slightly obsessed with the story and attempting to piece the events of this one night together. i hate to pull a ???this isn???t realistic??? in a sci-fi retelling of a shakespeare play, but the way this account is made up is just. NOT REALISTIC. bad journalism. bad science. the way it???s being framed as if this is a serious article/book (in universe) that???s being published??? really frustrating because i???m willing to suspend my disbelief a lot!! esp for shakespeare!! but somehow this was too much for me.

i honestly think that had liu just chosen to lose the frame narrative entirely i would have gone along with it much more.

honestly might have to reread at a later point knowing what i???m getting into to see if i can decide to focus more on the actual story.

This took me a little longer to read than I hoped. I was so enthralled with the concept and premise, but something was missing. I'm not sure exactly what though.

Do not get it twisted. I enjoyed this very much, but like I said something was missing and it felt wrong for it to be missing.

Overall, solid read and I think people are really going to enjoy this!

Thank you NetGalley, Em X Liu, and Rebellion Publishing for sending me an eARC for my honest review!

The Death I Gave Him by Em X Liu releases September 12, 2023!

The first and last part of this book were really strong, beautiful writing, engaging with just a touch of the strange, absolutely stunning, I wanted to stay with them forever.

The middle section is where things didn't quite do it for me. The writing was still pretty solid though it didn't feel quite on the level with the start of the book. Liu really managed to give most characters a voice of their own but I struggled to stay invested in most of them.

I received a review copy of this book through Netgalley and this is my honest review.

This book was nothing like anything that I have read before and I found myself wanting to hold off on reading it because I didn't want to finish it. Like At All.

I was a theatre kid so the minute I saw something about Shakespeare I knew that this was going to be a fun read.

I have a good feeling that this is going to become a big favourite once it's in everyone else's hands and I'm excited to see the reviews rolling in so I can scream my agreement with all the high star rated ones.

Thank you to NetGalley and Rebellion for providing me with this ARC. I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.