Our Violent Ends: #1 New York Times Bestseller! (These Violent Delights)

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Her cheek radiated heat, swelling from the harrowingly close contact of the bullets that flew by her head. Our Violent Ends is darker and weighs emotionally heavier than its predecessor --- as it should be, given how the plot explores and depicts itself; yet at the center of it all, it's a story between two characters born in rival families, with predetermined roles that shaped and influenced them to go against each other because they should, however love dares them to fight and hope against all odds, to do otherwise than expected of them. One of the greatest strengths of Our Violent Ends is the way it balances a heavier, meatier plot with character development. Then the screen flashed white again as a shrieking train derailed in the Wild West, and Juliette saw the figure in the audience rise. While these characters’ identities may not have been accepted in the 1920s, what is the significance of including explicitly queer characters and a trans character in Gong’s adaptation?

She crossed her arms tightly over her chest, the beads along her sleeves clinking loudly against the beads dangling from her front.They had always been two mirrored souls, the only ones who understood the other in a city that wanted to consume them whole, and now they were joined, mightier when together.

Because down on the ground level, looking like he had not a care in the world, Roma Montagov smiled and stopped in front of the merchant they were after, extending his hand for the merchant to shake. It was this city, divided by names and colors and turfs, but somehow bleeding the exact same shade of violence. Her gunshot had hardly drawn any notice, not when there was a shoot-out going on in the picture, too, drowning out the scream coming from the man’s mouth and covering up the smoke wafting from the barrel of her pistol. Roma knows it’s his fault for letting the ruthless Juliette back into his life, and he’s determined to set things right—even if that means killing the girl he hates and loves with equal measure. It's not the kind of love that rides them off into the sunset, but rather it's a love that burns fierce --- a love that's brave in the face of adversity.

In groups, create a three-to-five-minute silent movie version of either book, including a movie poster. The main thing keeping Roma and Juliette apart is this deception, Juliette refusing to tell him that she saved Marshall. But although I thought the citywide tensions helped to add texture to the plot and were interesting in abstract, I thought they overcomplicated the central story. The setting gives readers a sense of the political and social atmosphere in Shanghai in the mid-1920s, when Communist and Nationalist factions fighting for control of the government led to the Shanghai massacre and Chinese Civil War.