Critics' Opinion:
Readers' rating:
Published Sep 2023
432 pages
Genre: Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Publication Information
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…
With the lab on lockdown, Hayden is trapped with four other people—his uncle Charles, lab technician Gabriel Rasmussen, research intern Felicia Xia and their head of security, Felicia's father Paul—one of whom must be the killer. His only sure ally is the lab's resident artificial intelligence, Horatio, who has been his dear friend and companion since its creation. With his world collapsing, Hayden must navigate the building's secrets, uncover his father's lies, and push the boundaries of sanity in the pursuit of revenge.
"Ingenious … This is a nail-biter." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"This is a fantastic and innovative retelling. Highly recommended for adventurous readers." —Library Journal
"Clever in structure and reinterpretation – very nearly too clever, but it finds a tense, riveting balance." —GQ
"A bludgeoningly emotional read." —The Fantasy Hive
"Shakespeare, a haunted-house escape room, and a plot full of tenderness, philosophy, brazenness, and terror." —C. S. E. Cooney, author of Saint Death's Daughter
"Liu's exquisite prose perfectly marries physicality and emotionality, the visceral and the sterile. This is Hamlet reflected in a fractured mirror. Every angle on the familiar comes as a surprise; every new edge cuts with razor intelligence. And oh, the tension! It will murder you." —Shelley Parker-Chan, author of She Who Became the Sun
This information about The Death I Gave Him was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Em X. Liu is a writer and recent biochemistry graduate, which means they love stories about artificial intelligence and Shakespeare in equal measure. Since immigrating to Canada, they never go long without hopping on a plane to wander new places. But out of all the cities they've been to, they still love their home in Toronto the most.
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