Hayden is a young scientist who finds his father murdered. His uncle runs the lab and locks it down rather than call the police, The main characters in this story are the main characters from Shakespeare s Hamlet. Hayden is Hamlet. His best friend Horatio however is an AI system that monitors the lab. His uncle wants to give Hayden's to Hayden's mother who he is in love with. Ophelia is not the shrinking violet of the playbut a definitely kick ass young woman. She doesn't take her father's death, when it happens, well. Will everyone end up dead as in the play? It's a great idea, well told, highly recommended.

The Death I Gave Him by Em X. Liu

This is a fantastic lockdown STEM thriller. It has so much to it. Going in I had no idea what to expect, and it took me a minute to really get pulled in, but I have to say, once I started it I couldn’t put it down. I read this book in one sitting.

There are moments when William Shakespeare seeps right into the words, and you feel him there whispering inside your ear very much, like Horacio did into Hayden’s throughout much of the book. It was beautiful the way this was done props to the author for their wonderful prose.

There are a couple of scenes between Horatio and Hayden that are spicy AF and I’m totally here for it. It was crazy cool, how well that was done.

Even the building itself, Elsinore Labs is a character of its own and you feel it there. You can see it the entire time. You feel like you’re in it this pristine lab waiting for the cleanliness and the sterileness of the environment to choke you; and I sort of wonder if that’s what happened to Hayden.

All of the other characters, Felicia, Paul, Charlie, Graham, Hayden, and Horatio were all phenomenally written.

There were a few grammatical errors, sometimes in the chapter headings we’re instead of saying Excerpted it says Excepted. But I’m sure all of these errors will be fixed before the book is actually published in September.

The other things that happened grammatically that bothered me we’re all of the times that it said “started” or “began.” For a particular example something “started ringing” when it should just say it rang. I like a stronger verb tense in my reading so that’s just a personal preference but it’s something that pulled me out of the story each time it happened. I did not highlight each of those because that would’ve taken too much away from the reading itself. But I did highlight it once so that I wouldn’t forget it in my review.

I will copy my annotations below. Anything in red is something I really enjoyed anything and Blue is a grammatical error that I found. Some of my annotations may or may not contain spoilers so if you do not want any spoilers for the book, please skip the annotations.

So my overall review was four stars. It lost one star because of the grammar issues; but because the overall story came together, so well, I am totally giving this book a five-star review phenomenal work by the author. They are a great author. I’m not sure if this is their first novel or not, but it is a great novel, and I will be picking up other stories from them. I look forward to when this book releases in September and I can get a physical copy. Maybe I’ll get really lucky and be able to get a signed copy by the author one day; that would be super cool.


The Death I Gave Him - Em X. Liu


# Chapter Eleven

> Hayden clenches my teeth so hard it hurts. “I know.”

- Date: Apr 17, 2023
- Colour: Red
- Progression: 40%

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> The truth slips away, muddied like silt running into a riverbank.

- Date: Apr 17, 2023
- Colour: Red
- Progression: 41%

---

# Chapter Twelve

> Everything is too loud and quiet at the same time, like the shimmer before a thunderstorm, like the white-hot flash of a blow—pressure and weight before the pain hits. The kind of silence Hayden knows he can’t be the one to break.

- Date: Apr 17, 2023
- Colour: Red
- Progression: 46%

---

# Chapter Fourteen

> Did that mean that Charles’s moral compass was permanently broken? Once you kill one man, nothing matters anymore?

- Date: Apr 17, 2023
- Colour: Red
- Progression: 51%

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# Chapter Sixteen

> Excepted from Tell Me A Tragedy

- Date: Apr 17, 2023
- Colour: Blue
- Progression: 55%

---

> started ringing.

- Date: Apr 17, 2023
- Colour: Blue
- Progression: 56%

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> He learned up against the doorway,

- Date: Apr 17, 2023
- Colour: Blue
- Progression: 57%

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# Chapter Nineteen

> The upward crook of her lips drops

- Date: Apr 17, 2023
- Colour: Blue
- Progression: 67%

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# Chapter Twenty Two

> braces again him, rolls

- Date: Apr 17, 2023
- Colour: Blue
- Progression: 79%

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# Chapter Twenty Four

> Excepted from Tell Me A Tragedy

- Date: Apr 17, 2023
- Colour: Blue
- Progression: 81%

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# Chapter Twenty Six

> Excepted from Tell Me A Tragedy

- Date: Apr 17, 2023
- Colour: Blue
- Progression: 86%

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# Chapter Twenty Eight

> The snarling monster of a girl hiding in my chest, the one who wanted to shoot Hayden and blame Charles for it, she still exists inside me. Some days, she comes out, angry for no reason, hating the people she’s supposed to love.
> I want to smother her, but that only gives her more fuel, makes the tangled mess thicker and more snarled, until I can’t figure out where I end and where she begins. Or maybe there was never a division in the first place. Maybe I’m only deluding myself further.

- Date: Apr 17, 2023
- Colour: Red
- Progression: 94%

---

# Security footage; Armstrong Labs

> mostly likely

- Date: Apr 17, 2023
- Colour: Blue
- Progression: 95%

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Thank you to NetGalley and Rebellion for providing me with this ARC. I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

The Death I Gave Him is thoughtfully and beautifully written. I found it at its strongest where it diverges from the source material - the little changes were really intriguing. The locked room mystery aspect feels effective, despite the play already revealing many twists and turns. I also adored the character of Felicia, complicated as she is (I'm not sure I'd actually like her in real life, but she's a wonder to read). I personally wasn't entirely convinced by the love story aspect - though I get what Liu was trying to achieve with it - and found myself sometimes skimming the spicier parts.
Overall, the novel strikes a great balance between maintaining tension and allowing for reflection on the part of the characters. I really liked the mixed media approach - letters, CCTV recordings, and academic articles all help to form the narrative - which enabled the reader to see lots of different angles of the story. I think being stuck in Hayden or Felicia's head the entire time would have made for a very stressful reading experience.
Despite not being a five-star read for me, I would consider The Death I Gave Him to be one of my favourites of the year so far. I think it will stick with me for a while, and I can see myself re-reading and getting even more from it.

This book was nothing like anything that I have read before and I found myself wanting to hold off on reading it because I didn’t want to finish it. Like At All.

I was a theatre kid so the minute I saw something about Shakespeare I knew that this was going to be a fun read.

I have a good feeling that this is going to become a big favourite once it’s in everyone else’s hands and I’m excited to see the reviews rolling in so I can scream my agreement with all the high star rated ones.

<i>Thank you to NetGalley and Rebellion for providing me with this ARC. I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.</i>

This was an okay read for me, I always love a good locked-room thriller, and even more than that I love sci-fi thrillers, but sadly I found this book lacking in both those departments.

For a sci-fi book this had very little focus on any science, I really wish the worldbuilding had been expanded and that the character's research had been explained more thoroughly. I also don't think this was really a thriller, this focused much more on other things than actually finding out who the murderer was here. The plot itself was also pretty predictable, there weren't really any plot twists and you could definitely figure out what the ending would be early on.

What I liked about this was the format, it worked well for this type of story and it made this such a quick and easy read. I also enjoyed the writing and the relationships between the characters were quite intriguing, I didn't really care what happened to anyone but it was interesting to follow.

A queer retelling of Hamlet as a locked room thriller? Where do I sign? Ha ha! A lyrical, captivating story that builds intrigue and holds your attention right to the last word.

A queer, sci-fi retelling of Hamlet? Sounds weird but it works extremely well. Author Em X. Liu has given us a fantastically written thriller that you will not be able to walk away from. More, please!

I ended up loving The Death I Gave Him!
The book was pitched as a queer scifi retelling of Hamlet as a locked room thriller and If that doesn't make you want to read this book, I don't know what else could!
I really liked the writing style and the characters.
The story was also so good and I actually finished this book in a day as I couldn't put it down!
I definitely highly recommend this book!
Thank you so much for giving me the opportunity to read this book in exchange for an honest review.

This was smart and sharp but WILDLY overwritten. I can feel the tumblr poison dripping off every word. That's not a deal breaker as I am also frequently tumblr poisoned but it did make the book drag quite often.

The Death I Gave Him is pitched as "a lyrical, queer sci-fi retelling of Shakespeare's Hamlet as a locked-room thriller". Um. How about you inject it straight into my veins? When his father is found murdered in their lab, Elsinore is put on lockdown, and Hayden Lichfield sets out to lure the killer into the open. Trapped with four suspects — his uncle Charles, lab technician Gabriel Rasmussen, research intern Felicia Xia and their head of security, Felicia’s father Paul, Hayden must rely on his one ally: the lab’s resident AI, 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.

What immediately stood out to me about this book is the authorial confidence and linguistic flair. Hamlet demonstrably lends itself to queerness, and the claustrophobic locked room atmosphere is reminiscent of COVID lockdowns and Hayden's own spiralling mental health. Having the relationship between Hayden and Horatio transposed to human/AI links so well with the original Hamlet's concerns of mortality, humanity and connection. Everything just works so well. I really liked the structure of the book, slotting in Felicia's extracts from her memoir and interviews, which brings a modern touch and lends the original Ophelia more agency and deserved interest. I received an ARC of this book but I am looking forward to purchasing my own copy so I can enjoy the language on the physical page. It's a truly beautiful work, respectful to the original story yet elevating it into something that captures our modern world.

I am grateful to have received an ARC of this book from Rebellion Publishing via NetGalley in return for an honest review.

The Death I Gave Him offers an interesting new take on Hamlet that overall worked very well. The characters and storyline are highly trimmed, but that helps to avoid it feeling like a simple transplantation of the tale and rather a new work. I am no science expert, but the science espoused in the piece certainly felt well researched and believable. The locked-room-mystery approach to the story was also highly effective, as was the character of Horatio and his relationship with Hayden. The book covered some interesting themes and topics, such as the idea of immortality and striving to attain it. There was a point at the three-quarter mark where my attention wavered a little, but then I was caught up in the action again before the end. Recommended to fans of quirky Shakespeare retellings. It gets a solid four stars from me.

Thank you to NetGalley and Rebellion Publishing for allowing me to read an arc of this book

I haven’t read a murder mystery thriller in over a decade, and so I was unsure if I would enjoy this story or not. I’m so glad I gave it a try though because it was so interesting and kept me hooked throughout.

It took me a little while to understand who all the characters were and their relationships to each other, and the shifting pov changing from 1st person to 3rd was confusing at first, but that all made sense later.

There isn’t much I can say about the plot without giving things away. I really enjoyed it though, especially Horatio.
I recommend this book to those who love a good ‘who done it’, queer thrillers, or maybe just fancy trying out a different genre. I rate it four and a half stars.

CW’s- this book deals with death, murder, injury detail and suicidal thoughts and ideations.