Chloe Gong
Autor(a) de These Violent Delights
About the Author
Séries
Obras por Chloe Gong
Untitled (Flesh and False Gods, #2) 2 exemplares
A RomaJuliette Christmas Special 1 exemplar
The Priest and the Shepherd 1 exemplar
Nos fins violentes (broché) - Tome 02 1 exemplar
Associated Works
Writing in Color: Fourteen Writers on the Lessons We've Learned (2023) — Contribuidor — 16 exemplares
Etiquetado
Conhecimento Comum
- Data de nascimento
- 20th Century
- Sexo
- female
- Nacionalidade
- China (birth)
New Zealand - Agente
- Laura Crockett
Membros
Críticas
Listas
Prémios
You May Also Like
Associated Authors
Estatísticas
- Obras
- 14
- Also by
- 2
- Membros
- 5,674
- Popularidade
- #4,361
- Avaliação
- 3.9
- Críticas
- 84
- ISBN
- 92
- Línguas
- 9
Without any preamble, These Violent Delights has you falling into one familiar character after another—realizing without realizing the connection to Shakespeare’s archetypal characters. There’s the obvious Roma Montagov and Juliette Cai, but then it took me halfway through the book before I realized that the White Flowers scientist Lourens was the adaptation of Romeo’s herbalist Friar Laurence. None of these characters are cookie-cutter replicas of their Elizabethan counterparts, which made this a fresh read.
Like the prologue to Romeo and Juliet, which alludes to more hate and violence than love and romance, These Violent Delights also focuses more on the feuding in this 1920’s Shanghai gangster-ruled setting. In this version, it’s years after the original tragic ending where the only deceased counterpart characters are the Nurse and Lady Montague. We’re given snapshots of flashbacks to fill in the gaps about what has occurred to start and fuel the feud, as well as the alluded betrayal between the two main characters. This original plot pits Roma and Juliette, heirs of the blood-feuding gangs, against one in another in control of the city they love; however, they come together to fight a new sci-fi enemy—a monster that’s being unleashed on both Scarlets and White Flowers alike.
This story is at its best when the plot moves along without all of the muddled political dissection, which doesn’t seem to happen until the last 100 pages or so, and when the characters move beyond their single-layer trope, which, again, doesn’t happen until the last 100 pages. Juliette Cai portrayed as a cold-blooded killer doesn’t work until we see her struggle with one of the novel’s most essential questions: Do you have to become a monster to fight a monster?
Even though the middle seemed to drag rather mundanely, enough movement and intrigue occurred at the end that made me want to know what will happen next in this series—a series meant for ninth-graders. This first book is the perfect mix of Odysseus’s sea monsters lurking beneath the water’s edge, Romeo and Juliet’s lovers star-crossed above, and Lord of the Flies’ transcendental question of humans being the real monsters within.… (mais)