Critical Review: "These Violent Delights" by Chloe Gong

Quick Summary

Type: Novel, book 1 of These Violent Duets series

Genre: Romance, fantasy, historical fiction

Back Cover: "The year is 1926, and Shanghai hums to the tune of debauchery.

A blood feud between two gangs runs the streets red, leaving the city helpless in the grip of chaos. At the heart of it all is eighteen-year-old Juliette Cai, a former flapper who has returned to assume her role as the proud heir of the Scarlet Gang—a network of criminals far above the law. Their only rivals in power are the White Flowers, who have fought the Scarlets for generations. And behind every move is their heir, Roma Montagov, Juliette’s first love…and first betrayal.

But when gangsters on both sides show signs of instability culminating in clawing their own throats out, the people start to whisper. Of a contagion, a madness. Of a monster in the shadows. As the deaths stack up, Juliette and Roma must set their guns—and grudges—aside and work together, for if they can’t stop this mayhem, then there will be no city left for either to rule."

Read Time: 6 days

Rating: 2.25 stars

Review

So right off the bat, I have an issue with this book. The year is 1926, the place is Shanghai, so why, why, why is every character going by a Western name all the time? Why are the characters called Juliette, Rosalind, Kathleen, Tyler, Marshall, etc.? Even if these characters have studied in the West, and live in a city full of foreign influences, why don't they go by their given Chinese (or in Marshall's case, Korean) names? I don't understand it. Also, while we're on the topic of names, 'Roma' is not a Russian given name. It is a Russian nickname for 'Roman'. Why not just name the character Roman? Again, I don't get it.

Later on in the book, we learn that Juliette's Chinese name is Junli. This is as easy a Chinese name to pronounce in English as I've ever seen. Why were people using her English name? For God's sake, even her father, who gave her the name Junli, calls her Juliette. Why?

I'm also frustrated by Juliette's POV chapters so far. First, she talks over and over about how the Scarlet Gang is the only thing she cares about. It's getting a little repetitive. But more than that, I am frustrated by her oscillation between her identity as a person born in Shanghai and one raised for several years in the West. To be clear, it's not the split identity that I'm annoyed by. I have been wanting to read good stories about identities split between two cultures or two nations for a while as it's something I grapple with myself. But Juliette's struggle with that issue feels surface level, and that is what frustrates me. I wish the author explored that a little deeper.

Another issue I've caught is that from time to time, there are some grammatical mistakes that briefly take me out of the story. For example, we get this line: "...the buildings seem to sit a little straighter, the water seemed to run a little clearer..." This sentence is objectively incorrect, and it took from the buildup to an important scene.

But I'll give the author this: the bugs in the scalp causing the madness thing is super creepy.

There are also some things that bug me in terms of being anachronistic. For example, an older woman points out Kathleen's "Sagittarius constellation birthmark", but a quick internet search suggests that Western constellations like Sagittarius weren't well known in China until starting in 1930, when the IAU "standardized" 88 constellations, including Sagittarius. While younger, Westernized people in 1926 Shanghai might have known what Sagittarius was, I have my doubts as to whether older Chinese people would have recognized it. Either way, it definitely took me out of the story because I was focused on 'would they know about Sagittarius in 1926' instead of on the actual plot of the book.

So many things in this book are unrealistic. For example, Kathleen and Rosalind, despite being Juliette's closest friends and knowing everything about her, are surprised that the gangster's daughter and heir to the criminal empire is violent and uses physical threats to get what she wants? I mean, come on.

And that's really the only thing Juliette is good at. She's good at violence and being the bad-ass heir to the empire. But here's the thing: she thinks of herself as a socialite. But neither she nor the author understand the subtleties of effective socialites. Socialites are good at negotiation and diplomacy. They're nice to people because they never know if and when that person will be useful to them in the future. Juliette is not good at this. In fact, she's very bad at it. But then why does the author claim that Juliette is so good at being a socialite, someone who can negotiate effectively? What the author says and what she shows do not mesh.

And while we're on that subject, let's talk about Paul. Obviously, later on in the book, we learn that Paul is exactly as awful as Juliette makes him out to be early on. But until then, he has done nothing to merit the amount of disdain Juliette shows him. As far as I can tell, Juliette hates him for 95% of the book because he's British and into her. I think the author started the story knowing Paul would be the big villain, and so allowed her own personal hatred of him seep through too early into the story. And because of that unwarranted absolute hatred, it was pretty easy to figure out who the Larkspur was way earlier than I think I was meant to.

Now onto how unrealistic this whole story was. Seriously, one of my notes for this story is "everyone in this story is dumb and acting unrealistically". Take Lord Montagov, for example. His beloved, innocent twelve-year-old daughter is succumbing to the madness, and Lord Montagov isn't doing a damn thing in order to punish Roma. Unrealistic. Roma has defeated his biggest rival in the gang in a fight and could kill him, but doesn't even though killing him would probably save his life and up his reputation. Unrealistic. The super secretive Communists are extremely forthcoming with the secrets of their Secretary General. Unrealistic. Juliette tries to get information from Paul, and has the nerve to believe that Paul doesn't know what she's after even though she's already told him. Unrealistic and stupid.

Maybe all of this wouldn't be so annoying to me if Juliette weren't such a Mary Sue. I mean, seriously. She can outdrink men twice her size, she's more ruthless than anyone in her gang, she's more skilled than anyone else, she's beautiful with smooth, pale skin and no flaws, she's a diplomatic negotiation goddess (supposedly), she's so smart and brilliant, everyone loves her except for the obvious antagonistic forces ( even then, Paul is in love with her and Marshall likes her in a friendly way), etc. And because she's such a Mary Sue, I'm just constantly annoyed by her character. I'm also now wondering: were we not supposed to suspect Paul because he was so in love with Juliette and anyone in love with Juliette can't possibly be a bad guy? Was that supposed to be the red herring?

Finally, every once in a while there's a 'stylistic' chapter written in present tense. I'm not quite sure what the point of these chapters are, but I can say this: the author is not a strong enough writer to pull off 'stylistic' well.

This book was about as boring, predictable, and unrealistic as any I've read this year. I didn't like any of the characters except for the twelve-year-old girl. I thought all the characters acted stupidly, often in ways that contradicted their 'established' (told) personalities. There was poor grammar, anachronistic elements, unnecessary trying-too-hard-ineffectively chapters, and not nearly enough exploration of deep, interesting topics. There were opportunities to explore some interesting topics (biculturalism, forbidden love, politics, workers' rights, etc.) but any discussion of these issues were incredibly surface level, probably because Juliette was a shallow character.

The book ended on a massive cliffhanger. I'm a big fan of books that can standalone, even if they're the first in a series, so this annoyed me. That being said, I'm going to pretend that this was a standalone because there's no way in hell I'm reading a second book from this author. I'm sure she's very nice, but I don't find her particularly good at characterization and storycrafting (currently). She does have some excellent ideas (the bugs causing the madness were creepy as hell, so kudos there) and if she can hone her craft, one day she could write a very good book. This book, however, was not a very good book. It was bad.