THESE VIOLENT DELIGHTS

RELEASED OUT NOW! 464 pages | Hardback/ebook Author Chloe Gong

Publisher Hodder & Stoughton

Nowadays an awful lot of stories are billed as something familiar with a twist: a genderswapped this, a that in space, an alternate the other. These Violent Delights’ title gives its “something familiar” away: Romeo And Juliet. And that’s actually a pity, because this isn’t very close to the play, certainly not in the way Tessa Gratton’s The Queens Of Innis Lear played with King Lear without straying too far from the original’s plot. It doesn’t explore or deepen or comment on the play it’s associated with, nor stick closely to its plot.

What it is is a perfectly serviceable urban fantasy set in 1920s Shanghai, where the heirs to rival gangs – one Chinese, one Russian – are investigating a strange madness that makes people tear their own throats out. The setting’s brilliant, a city split by merchant colonies and divided into gang territories, in a country itself fractured politically and on the verge of revolution. The lead characters have similarly blurred boundaries, with Americaneducated Juliette Cai both caring and ruthless, and Shanghai-bred Roma Montagov soft yet prepared to be brutal. So it’s a shame the story’s been tied, however loosely, to the play, because that dampens the wonderful sense of chaos and possibility. Violent, yes, but acceptable rather than delightful. Miriam Mcdonald