Book reviews: backlog edition, part 3

These Violent Delights by Chloe Gong

Genre: YA, historical fantasy

Content warnings: Graphic descriptions of parasitic bugs, transphobia

No one is sadder than me that I didn’t love this book.

These Violent Delights is billed as a retelling of Romeo and Juliet, set in 1920s Shanghai between Juliette Cai and Roma Montagov, the feuding heirs of two gangs, the Scarlet Gang and the White Flowers, respectively. But when a new, infectious "madness" begins to affect the citizens of Shanghai, Juliette and Roma have to overcome their past betrayals to work together in order to stop the madness from overtaking their city.

 
First, credit where credit is due: Gong does a phenomenal job bringing 1920s Shanghai to life and discussing the issues of colonization during that time. This was far and away my favorite part of the book.

Unfortunately, I wasn't a fan of...basically everything else.

For one, this feels like one of those books where you can tell the author adores her characters, but since I didn't love the characters nearly as much, the reading experience was awkward. Juliette was okay. Roma was okay. I wanted to love Marshall and Benedikt, but they were just...fine. Five-six months after I finished These Violent Delights, and I can barely remember the characters except for maybe one defining trait each.

For another, the pacing of this book was pretty slow. Ninety percent of the book is basically the main characters running around, trying to find a solution for the "madness" afflicting Shanghai, but only slowly uncovering information about the disease, and it was just...not very compelling to read about.

Related to this: I've previously made my feelings clear regarding retellings, and These Violent Delights is a very, very loose retelling of Romeo and Juliet. Which I honestly found quite distracting, given that the character names were so close to those of R&J, yet the plot events were almost completely unrelated. I honestly wish the author had given the characters different names, because then I might not have spent the entire time wondering how this story was related to R&J.

Honestly, the fact that it took me weeks to finish this book, and I eventually forced myself to finish the book by listening to the audio, says it all.

Also, I have...reservations about the queer rep. Benedikt and Marshall ended up being too boring for me to care about them too much, but the book goes into a fair amount of detail about the transphobia Kathleen faces. Plus, I don't understand how Kathleen can pass as a cis woman if this is 1920-something and she doesn't have access to HRT or surgery...

 
(Sidenote: Every time I heard Qi Ren’s name, I couldn’t help sniggering. I don’t know what Gong’s intention was here, but without any tone markings, it sounded to me like 气人. For those who don’t know Mandarin, 气人 means something is annoying/pisses you off, so...yeah.)

 

Audiobook review: It’s not often that I write a review specifically for the audiobook, but I honestly found the audiobook for These Violent Delights to be disappointing. I think the narrator is East Asian, but I found the pronunciation of Mandarin to be off enough that it consistently broke my immersion; also, the French pronunciation was so bad that I couldn’t understand most of the French until I went back to read the actual text. Worst of all, the narrator tried to differentiate different characters...by voicing half of the characters in a whisper, which made it really difficult for me to hear and I was constantly having to rewind to catch what I missed. The audiobook was a frustrating experience overall.



Inside Darkness by Hudson Lin

Genre: Adult gay romance

Content warnings: Depictions of PTSD

Summary: After a decade as an aid worker, Cameron Donnelly returns home jaded, tired, and with more than just a minor case of PTSD. Plagued by recurring nightmares but refusing to admit he has a problem, Cam quickly spirals into an alcohol-infused depression, and everyone around him is at a loss for how to help.

Journalist Tyler Ang met Cam on a reporting assignment in Kenya, and their first encounters were rife with hostility and sexual tension. Back in New York, their paths continually cross, and each time, Cam’s brokenness reminds Ty more and more of his own difficult childhood. Letting Cam in goes against Ty’s instinct to live life autonomously, but the damaged aid worker manages to sneak past his guard.

Their relationship is all sharp corners and rough edges, and just as they’re figuring out how to fit together, a life-threatening accident puts it all in jeopardy. If they want a future together, both will have to set aside their egos and learn to carry each other’s burdens.
 

I’m all about promoting queer romances starring QPOC and written by QPOC, and I'm especially keen on reading romances with queer Asian characters by queer Asian authors. Unfortunately, this one fell a little flat for me personally. Part of it was definitely the writing style, which was a lot of telling rather than showing. I also couldn’t figure out why Ty was into Cam, which made their relationship feel lopsided to me.

 

In general, although Ty and Cam were dual protagonists, it felt like there was more focus on Cam’s issues than Ty’s. Which isn’t to say that every book with dual protagonists needs to focus on both equally, but it did kind of feel like Ty had to care for and prop up Cam more than the reverse, which also feels like more of an issue considering Cam is white and Ty is a person of color. (It made me think of internet discussions I’ve seen about how we, as a society, tend to “valorize white (male) suffering.”)

 

The word “darkness” was repeated many times throughout the book (as in, Cam’s “darkness”). I don’t know if people with PTSD externalize their PTSD to that degree, but it sounded...weird, to me as a reader. As though the author were trying to describe PTSD in a very literary way, but the effect didn’t work for me.

 

Also, I couldn’t really find many of the sex scenes sexy because they were clearly written as one of Cam’s coping methods for his PTSD. The eroticization of it actually made me uncomfortable.