By Isabella Gu
Smoky, salt-drenched mist infuses your lungs with a sinful beckoning to come closer, closer to a blood-soaked city as peaceful as war, a place where revenge is religion and violence is politics. A city where radiant silks glimmer under gunpowder explosions and jazz rhythms are punctuated by the screams of traitors piercing the night; such is the city of Shanghai in Author Chloe Gong’s duology, These Violent Delights and These Violent Ends. A post-Roaring Twenties era reimagining of Romeo and Juliet, an entire city cautiously foxtrots on the edge of violent revolution as two cunning and ruthlessly violent gangs vie for ultimate power, no matter the cost. The Violent Delights duology may be a retelling of Romeo and Juliet, but the explosive relationship between the heirs of the rival gangs isn’t all lovey-dovey and adolescent impulsivity (sorry Shakespeare); rather, it is a crushingly painfully romance fitting for a city where loyalties run thicker than blood. However, romance doesn’t drive the plot alone. These Violent Delights explores the turbulent political landscape that would only exist in a city dirtier than sin and examines the bitterness and prejudices its multidimensional characters are willing to cling onto for as long as they live, right until their bloody ends. Striking a perfect balance between being action-filled and slower paced, the reader will feel as though they witness the characters moment by moment in their fight for a more hopeful future in a city so brutalized by its past. By the end, you’ll be begging for Shakespeare to rewrite his own original Romeo and Juliet, if only to save the characters of These Violent Delights from a devastatingly brutal finale.
