Tuesday, February 2, 2021

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: These Violent Delights by Chloe Gong





These Violent Delights is a Young Adult* fantasy adaptation of Romeo and Juliet by debut author Chloe Gong.  More interestingly, this is not just an adaptation set in a similar setting with fantasy elements but when where the story has been shifted to 1920s colonized Shanghai - a city divided among Western Powers who looked down upon the Chinese inhabitants and what little parts they controlled.  Add in a monster that causes madness and destruction and you have a lot of plot elements here that are not in the original story, which made this all the more intriguing for me to pick up.  

*This book is marketed and shelved as YA, but I'm not really sure if I'd have called it YA without that fact: Our Protagonists are 19 yes but are more or less dealing entirely with adult matters here, with their YA-like days being reduced to memories/flashbacks.  That said, there's nothing that'll be a problem here if YA readers take this for a spin.*

And I really liked These Violent Delights quite a bit, which hits many of the beats of the Romeo and Juliet story, remains a bit tragic, but really makes the characters original at the same time as it transitions them to colonized Shanghai.  And it really emphasizes the impact of colonialism, especially in a city colonized not just by one power, but a number all that disrespect the locals - a group that includes not just the native Chinese but other refugee peoples who fled there (and of course you have the communist party along with all of the above).  And with the two families replaced by two gangster families with a blood feud, several queer characters, and a mystery monster all in the plot, you have a lot of changes from the original Romeo and Juliet in ways that are absolutely fascinating to read.  


--------------------------------------------------Plot Summary-----------------------------------------------------
Shanghai, 1926.  A City divided by foreign powers - the French, the British, everyone, with the Chinese limited to smaller and smaller parts.  Struggling for what's left of the city are two gangs: the Chinese Scarlet Gang and the Russian Refugee-led White Flowers.  Juliette Cai is the daughter of the head of the Scarlet Gang, and should be the unquestioned heir to the Gang.  But she left Shanghai for America 4 years ago in disgrace, betrayed by the boy she dared to love....Roma Montagov, the heir to the White Flowers.  

Now Juliette is back in the city and struggling to show her worthiness as the heir, to show that she has the ruthlessness to lead them in a city where foreign powers are encroaching on every last inch.  But when a strange monstrous phenomena starts affecting both the White Flowers and the Scarlet Gang, causing people to go mad and kill themselves, she finds herself forced once more to work with Roma to try and find a way to stop it.  But both Juliette and Roma's leadership will be in question if their alliance is discovered, and despite the betrayal, Juliette finds she might still have feelings for the other boy....feelings she cannot afford to have if she wants to survive. 
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These Violent Delights is a Romeo and Juliet adaptation and it hits a lot of the beats you'd expect.  So you have Roma and Juliette taking their respective roles, and Roma has his best friends who are clearly pastiches of the Shakespearian characters as well.  You have two gangs in a blood feud, you have a balcony scene, and you even have a drug that can make one appear dead for hours before reviving.  

But all that comes with a world that is so so much more, and it takes this well above the standard Romeo and Juliet adaptation.  Take the setting, Shanghai in 1926, divided by Imperialist Western powers like Britain and France, with the Chinese having second class status in some respects in their own city.  Juliette and Roma's gangs struggle with this fact, at the fact that they need the power of the Western Powers but they reach and reach and reach (well the gangs sometimes are in denial about who needs whom) - and both Juliette and Roma have learned to speak American or European Accented languages to deal with them (and Juliette has spent almost as much time in America as Shanghai).  The gangs aren't just Chinese - the White Flowers are led by Russian Refugees who fled the Russian Revolution, but also include people of other origins (Roma's friend Marshall Seo for example is Korean).  And of course the local Chinese are having their own political movements - both Nationalist and Communist, which has a major impact on local politics...especially as the monster becomes apparent.  All of this is wrapped together so well that it feels like it was always part of the story, and carries the sheer struggle and nature of 1926 Shanghai right to the reader.  

Of course this wouldn't work without the characters playing the roles being so good - and yeah they really do work.  Juliette is basically the biggest character and she's a 19 year old devoted to trying to show her worth and ruthlessness, quick with a garrote wire if a person isn't paying their protection money, and desperate to show she is not the lovestruck betrayed girl she was at 15.  From her time out West she recognizes better than most how the Western Powers are grabbing more and more power and is outraged by it all and wants to do something.  Her two best friends and allies are her cousins - Rosalind, whose main job is as an exotic dancer for the gang, and Kathleen, a trans girl struggling to repay what she thinks is a debt for Juliette while trying to live the life she believes she ought to have.   

Then you have Roma - a 19 year old boy who regrets dreadfully his past betrayal and wishes the blood feud between the gangs would be over, even as that desire has essentially played him out of the chance at leading the White Flowers after his father is gone.  But he's a boy who knows he has to do what's right, even when those supposedly in charge refuse to see the real dangers of the monster and the West right in front of him, and who will refuse to let those he cares about go in danger.  Allied with him are Marshall Seo and Benedikt Montagov, as close to him as brothers (Benedikt is a cousin) who might mean something more to each other...(okay they definitely do). 

And both Roma's crew and Juliette's along with several other side antagonists within the gang are done really well, in a plot that both contains the requisite plot beats you'd expect in Romeo and Juliet but spun off in ways you won't expect....all leading to a conclusion that is devastating in a totally different way than the original.  If there's perhaps a weakness, it's that the book is probably slightly too long, and that the identity of its main antagonist is kind of obvious, but the former is probably necessary to fit it all in.  A sequel is planned, and I will be there for sure to see how this all plays out - and I'd recommend yall try to get on board as well.   

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