The Death I Gave Him – Em X. Liu

Published By: Solaris
Pages: 432
Released On: 14/09/2023

A lyrical, queer sci-fi retelling of Shakespeare’s Hamlet as a locked-room thriller.

A Twenty-First Century Hamlet.

Hayden Lichfield’s life is ripped apart when he finds his father murdered in their lab, and the camera logs erased. The killer can only have been after one thing: the Sisyphus Formula the two of them developed together, which might one day reverse death itself. Hoping to lure the killer into the open, Hayden steals the research. In the process, he uncovers a recording his father made in the days before his death, and a dying wish: Avenge me…

*****

Thanks to Solaris for the gifted advanced proof of this title in return for an honest review.

I was a bit dubious about this when it said it had been inspired by Hamlet – mainly because I assumed they meant it was an adaptation, and in my opinion, no-one should mess around with Shakespeare – but of course that’s not what they meant at all. Hamlet is simply a stepping stone to what this is. And what is this? Bloomin’ brilliant!

You don’t have to have read Hamlet to make sense of this. And if you didn’t know that was the inspiration, I’m not sure it would be completely obvious. But by knowing the link, I think you get slightly more out of it. Having said that, if you have read Hamlet and know the twists and surprises and ending, then that may mean there’s not complete surprises in this book, but it doesn’t detract from the reading of it for me. In fact, it adds to it. Liu has created a clever way of balancing this traditional Shakespearean idea but made it modern, but without losing any of its heart.

It’s a fascinating concept, stopping death, bringing back people from the dead, allowing for immortality. It poses many morality questions. Who says we have the right to play God? Who do we decide who can die and who doesn’t? Isn’t it the natural way of things to die? Why would we interfere with nature when it’s too strong for us? If we don’t die, how long until the world cannot habit any more people? If we don’t die, does that mean we stop giving birth? Would someone brought back from he dead be alive, or simply not dead? Would you risk death just to prove you could beat it? What are you prepared to risk? Who would you save? Who would you sacrifice? It’s a book that’s entertaining but also gives you a lot to think about.

I love how Em has decided to format it. They’ve not just gone down the linear narrative route, although that would have been fine. They’ve played up to the strangeness and the fear and the fantasy of the situation, through present POV, articles, essays, transcripts, camera footage, and AI thoughts. And somehow it just works. You’re thrown into this mix and it keeps you on your toes throughout. And I’m not sure, if they’d have chosen a simpler format, if it would have had quite the same effect on the reader.

The one thing I wasn’t sure of when reading, and still aren’t now I’ve finished, are the footnotes. You generally don’t see footnotes in a fictional book. I do understand their context – which I won’t explain here for fear of spoilers, but I didn’t necessarily feel there was a need for them. Having said that, they didn’t detract from the main story, and in my opinion, if you ignored them, you wouldn’t be worse off.

It took me a chapter or two to fully get with the format and the story, but once you’re in, boy are you in! I just devoured it. I read it whist on holiday and all I wanted to do was hibernate in the cottage until I finished it.

Considering the teaser says it was a queer story, I was expecting more. Maybe that’s just me, but it’s only really nearer the end that we start reading what I would refer to as a queer plot. It’s great as it is, don’t see this as a complaint, but I think I’d have liked a bit more.

It has great pacing. Considering it’s only set in a very short period of time and in one location, with only half a dozen characters, it could have felt slow and drawn out. But they’ve got it right. There’s moments of fast-paced thrilling action but that’s juxtaposed by some really tender heartfelt moments. This means it is slow enough to keep up with the action but fast enough that you get the full thriller experience.

None of the characters stood out more than the other for me. They were all fabulously written and all felt on a level playing field. It flitted back and forth from each character and they were all really interesting. If I’m being brutally honest, I’d have liked a bit more character development, but when you’ve only got a short time period to play with, it’s hard to fit in more characterisation without it feeling shoehorned in.

At its heart it is a fantasy, sci-fi, locked room, mystery thriller. And whilst I adore those kind of books, I have often found (and I understand this is a generalisation and solely my opinion) that books with these kind of elements are written for entertainment purposes and shock values, using the prose to move the story along rather than to make the reader really think. But Em has written this with such a poetry feel about it. It flows so well, they’ve managed to combine the different formats expertly, and it’s just a beautiful piece of work to read.