Short Stories

These Violent Delights comparison

I recently read These Violent Delights by Chloe Gong for a book club. While I was searching for the book on Goodreads, I found that there was another book called These Violent Delights. So I decided to read it. Which leads us to here, rating which These Violent Delights book is the best by a couple of different factors.

Background information:

These Violent Delights by Chloe Gong is a Romeo and Juliet retelling in 1920s Shanghai. It is about Roma and Juliette, heirs to rival gangs, having to work together (although they don't officially work together until 200 pages in) to stop a monster. The monster kills people by releasing bugs that lodge into people's brains and make them claw out their throats.

These Violent Delights by Micah Nemerever is a book about a toxic, all-consuming intimacy, codependent gay relationship between two college students, Paul and Julian, in the 1970s. As Paul and Julian becomes more toxic, it leads to them doing something twisted and evil.

Now that you know the background information, let's get to comparing the two books.

I'm just going to call These Violent Delights by Chloe Gong: CG and These Violent Delights by Micah Nemerever: MN.

Part 1: Characters

Likability:

In CG, Roma and Juliette are both heirs to a gang, which means they're rich and their gangs are responsible for a lot of violence and deaths. However, I like that both of them had the attitude that without the workers, there would be no gang. Their entire mission to stop the monster is rooted in their care for the workers, which makes both of them likable. There were some times that I thought Juliette was a hypocrite, since she used violence a lot, but it doesn't make her any less likable.

In MN, I liked Paul and Julian in the beginning. Julian had this extrovert energy that I, as an introvert, is attracted to. However, I didn't like that he didn't put as much effort in the relationship as Paul did, and he bosses Paul around a lot to the point of toxicity. He does semi-redeem himself in the second half, but it wasn't enough to make me fully like him. Paul is tolerable and somewhat likable in the first half, but the second half made me hate him. He doesn't accept Julian for who he is but hates him when he isn't his extroverted self. Also, they both committed this bad and violent thing that starts with m and ends with r, which is a no-no in my books.

CG gets a point for likability.

Development:

In CG, Juliette was pretty developed. I like her identity struggle of being Chinese and feeling like an American. She has been hurt and taught to accept the violence, but she fought that and tried to be a good person. She also fights the ideal that she is inferior just because she is a woman and is Chinese. Most of the side characters were developed as well, or at least had some personality. Roma was four steps short of being white bread. That is mainly because the author didn't spend as much time developing his character.

In MN, Paul and Julian were developed. Paul had this habit of killing butterflies for art, which adds to the darkness of his personality. The darkness affects him so much, he becomes a psychopath. This is woven subtly in until his true character is shown. Julian is developed, mainly because of his ability to lie and pretend. It makes you wonder what is true and what isn't. They are mostly developed through their all-consuming relationship, which makes both of them worse people as a result.

MN gets a point for development (because Roma was not developed enough).

Family:

In CG, Juliette's family is shown a lot. Her relationship with her parents is healthy, except they force her to do things sometimes. She also have three main cousins that she has complicated relationships with. Roma's mother died, and his father only showed up in this story a couple of times to be a horrible parent. He has a cousin, Benedikt, and a sister, Alisa, both of which he cares about, but doesn't spend a lot of time with them in the book.