Rutabaga's Reads 2022: Part 18

An unusual achievement for me, here is the second adult fiction compilation post for 2022!

A Spindle Splintered (Oct. 5, 2021) by Alix E. Harrow.

*This is the first novella in a series.*

It isn’t the spindle of a spinning wheel that will be Zinnia Gray’s downfall, but industrial pollution. Zinnia has Generalized Roseville Malady, and no person diagnosed has lived to turn 22 years old; Zinnia has just turned 21. It’s her last birthday, and her best friend, Charm (Charmaine Baldwin, “best/only friend”), has pulled out all the stops for Zin’s last birthday. It’s sleeping-beauty-themed (Zin’s a bit of an expert), complete with a tower (of the old state penitentiary), a plastic princess crown and a spinning wheel. When Charm dares her to prick her finger on the spinning wheel, she does – of course she does – but something happens. Someone calls out, “Help.” And Zinnia answers that call. It turns out sleeping beauties do exist, but their stories are not necessarily the stories one’s familiar with. Bits and pieces, yes, but not the entire narrative. In helping another sleeping beauty, will Zinnia be able to alter – or escape – her fate?

            If you’re looking for a fractured fairy tale, consider picking this one up. If you’re looking for a Disney-esque fairy tale, keep looking. “A Spindle Splintered” is the first in the Fractured Fables series. A feminist story that’s acerbic but sometimes sweet, subversive but still charming in a dark, twisted way, and entertaining despite its sometimes one-dimensional feel. (I think its one-dimensional feel came from its novella size, as opposed to a full-length novel where the author could better flesh characters out, especially supporting ones). It’s a story of sisterhood and stubbornness, imagination and fracture. It’s got a queer romance-in-the-making. It is a story gone rogue that still manages to be magical.

The God of Lost Words (Nov. 2, 2021) by A.J. Hackwith.

*This is the final novel in a trilogy.*

*Spoilers included if you haven’t read the previous books in the series.*

The Library of the Unwritten is in trouble. Malphas, general of Hell and the “Grandmother of Ghosts,” is a chief demon in Lucifer’s absence. Although Hell does not govern the Unwritten and Arcane Wings of Hell’s Library, Malphas has learned that the stories are souls. She will do whatever she can, through force and cunning, to harness those souls and gain more power. If that happens, it would mean obliteration for the Library. Arcanist and former Librarian Claire, Librarian and former muse Brevity, rakish Hero and the angel-Watcher Ramiel (Rami) will have to band together to outwit Hell and start a revolution. They will traverse the libraries of other realms to try to gain allies, but the effort seems futile. The Unwritten Wing’s Librarians’ log tends to hide entries until they are needed. That is how Claire discovers the entries of Poppaea Julia. She once rebelled against Hell and almost succeeded. Claire is on the lookout for “a realm, a guide, a library, a god.” That is what will purportedly keep them safe from Hell’s grasp forever. They’ve got to write the Library a new chapter.

            The concluding novel in an inventive trilogy, the fast-paced plot, intriguing world-building and the ​standout characters coalesce into a story that journeys to a hopeful yet bittersweet end. Hackwith’s writing is striking, the prose often thoughtful and deep, but inserts cheekiness as well. The action is both colorful and dark with plenty of emotion. There is queer representation, but what’s most poignant about all the characters, be they fallen, of an unwritten story, once a muse or once a living, breathing human, is that they are complex characters with wants and fears, brave fronts and self doubts, making them feel real to the readers. Though it may sound strange to say about a series titled Hell’s Library, this saga has been a delight to read. What a journey!

            Book One: The Library of the Unwritten

            Book Two: The Archive of the Forgotten​

            Favorite lines: “But that’s what stories did. Let enough impossible things pass through you and they gain a kind of reality. Stories grant the impossible emotional gravity, create new orbits – and your mental universe expands.” (p. 239)

Pachinko (Feb. 7, 2017) by Min Jin Lee.

*This is a standalone novel.*

“A woman’s lot is to suffer.” Kim Sunja is no stranger to this when her father dies when she’s 13, and she takes on more responsibility in helping her mom manage and take care of a boardinghouse. As a teenager in the early 1930s in Yeongdo, Sunja becomes pregnant with a married man’s child, and she refuses to be his mistress. Baek Isak, a kindhearted but frail minister, feels called to marry Sunja if she’ll have him and will give their child a name, though the baby isn’t his by blood. They marry and immigrate to Osaka, Japan, where Isak’s brother and sister-in-law live (Yoseb and Kyunghee). Sunja’s son, Noa (inspired by the Bible’s Noah), is her world, and later, so is Mozasu (inspired by Moses), her son with Isak. But life in Osaka is not easy. It is difficult for Koreans in Japan to find work, as it seems impossible to any of them that they could become Japanese citizens, so even with Noa and Mozasu being born in Japan, they are treated like foreigners or worse, like scum. The boys grow up and go different directions, having families of their own, and their dynamics are so different from each other. The story goes through 1989, when Sunja is in her 70s. Through these decades, never completely out of the picture is Noa’s birth father, Koh Hansu, who married into the second most powerful yakuza (gangster) family in Kansai (a region of Japan, which includes Osaka and Kyoto).

            As a National Book Award Finalist, I expected this book to be impressive, and it is. It is amazingly well-written, but the story is replete with hardship. It isn’t only about hardship and suffering with nothing else to go on, but hardship and love, suffering and family, sacrifice and ambition. From the dusty streets of the poor in Ikaino (the ghetto where the Koreans in Osaka live) to the pachinko parlors of the gambling-obsessed and from Korea to Japan to one character’s stint in New York for school, “Pachinko” is a multifaceted story filled with strong women, devoted families, moral crises, survival and anguish, even as the characters rise to thrive. It makes a reader think about history in a way that’s harsh but exquisite. It is haunting and brilliantly presented. Those who love Korea should read this, as should those who know nothing about Korea outside of K-dramas, K-pop, kimchi, Hyundai and Samsung, because, wow, this book has soul.

"Vampiric Vacation" by Kiersten White

Vampiric Vacation (Sept. 27, 2022) by Kiersten White.

*This is the second novel in a series.*

The Sinister-Winterbottom children have traded in Fathoms of Fun for the Sanguine Spa in the Little Transylvania Mountains. Aunt Saffronia drops them off with vague instructions to “look closer” and “find what was lost.” After 16-year-old Wil almost walks herself off a cliff while staring intently at Rodrigo, her phone, the youth encounter Mina, who has unexpected outbursts directed at the ceiling. There’s also a disembodied voice and dreams of Lucy, Mina’s mysterious younger sister, who’s just gone. Or is she? Sanguine Spa’s owner is known as the Count, a cold, intimidating man with red, red lips, and he’s in partnership with a child called Quincy, who’s excellent at lassoing, and which Theo believes she must learn how to do (along with rappelling and lock-picking, because new life skills). The Count and Quincy separate the kids from the adults and send them on a scavenger hunt, giving Theo and Alexander good opportunity to snoop around. The Sanguine Spa is an eerie place with the Count, Mina’s odd outbursts, suspiciously red drinks for the adults, locked doors and vampire bats. What’s really going on, and who is Van H?

            The second gothic, spooky-but-not-really summer adventure in the Sinister Summer series is another fast-moving middle-grade novel of flippancy and fun. There are spa guests laid out like corpses, a cave full of bats (and their guano, “because bat poop was so fancy it even had its own name”) and a villainous appearance by someone the Sinister-Winterbottoms encountered at the water park. Fully immersed readers will want to have read the first in the series to connect clues in this clever and entertaining story with quirky characters. This eerie escapade is delightfully devious, but also cheekily charming. It is another wonderfully weird story from White. Next stop: summer camp in a “mountainous lake region.” (There is a book in Sanguine Spa’s library tiled A History of Summer Camps and the Unexplained Disappearances of Various Campers in the Mountainous Lake Regions. Coincidence?)

            Book 1: Wretched Waterpark

Rutabaga's Reads 2022: Part 17

This compilation of K-authors exists because the books were one order. I didn’t go into it planning on only ordering books by authors of Korean descent, but sometimes life is coincidental that way. Only the middle-grade author is familiar to me. One of the books was actually free, which is the sole reason I ordered three books instead of two.

The Last Fallen Moon (June 14, 2022) by Graci Kim.

*This is the second book in a trilogy.*

*Spoilers from the dust jacket included.*

Hero. Riley Oh doesn’t care for that word. She’s saved the Mortalrealm, but now the Gom clan (Healers) are powerless, many of them hate her to the point of cursing her, and her closest family and friends have no past memories of her after her deal with a dokkaebi (demon). Fortunately, her sister, Hattie, remembers her, but she falls into comas, and each of those sleeps are becoming concernedly longer than the last. When Riley reads of Saint Heo Jun, she is encouraged, thinking he’ll become the Gom’s new patron god (he has honorary god status), and all will be well. She must journey to the Spiritrealm (where Cheondang is heaven and Jiok is hell; there are seven hell prisons), which is having restructuring issues of its own, and Riley’s course is made more challenging since she’s undocumented. She meets Danny Zuko-loving Dahl (“with hair the color of pearls”), who’s got a big secret of his own, but he’s such a confident, helpful, unofficial tour guide that she accepts his help. Dahl grew up in the Spiritrealm at the Home for Heavenborns (like an orphanage), so he dreams of seeing the Mortalrealm and experiencing everything from the food to the toilets. Dahl is like the eum to Riley’s yang, but she struggles to let friendship in. Riley is carrying around much guilt after what happened a couple months back. She is adamant that she needs to fix everything on her own, but she’ll find that there is strength in accepting help from others.

            Like being 13 years old isn’t hard enough, Riley delves deeper into Korean mythology in this second of the Gifted Clans novels. Kim creates wonderful word pictures, making the story very current from the king/mayor of the underworld (or Spiritrealm) looking like actor Lee Minho to naming seven of the imugis after the members of BTS (“Watch out for Jungkook, though, won’t you? He may be the youngest, but he’s got the biggest bite.”). Her world-building is detailed and rich, filled with magic, creatures of myth and [sometimes corrupt] divine beings all being tackled by a Korean-American girl just trying to figure things out. There is a nice balance of frustration and fun, seriousness and sass, trying hard and tangled feelings. This Korean mythology fantasy story is a nonstop rollercoaster of adventure with multiple Korean terms and cultural references. It’s enthralling and is the type of magical world within a contemporary society that I’d want to be included in!

            P.S. I want access to an edible food forest!

            P.P.S. Imugis are creatures that are part snake, part yong (dragon). They have “creepy, scaly skin,” “teeth like sharks” and “forked tails as sharp as blades coated with acid. Makes skin melt like butter.” Now imagine if you had one as a pet!

            Book One: The Last Fallen Star

The Noh Family (May 3, 2022) by Grace K. Shim.

*Standalone or first in a series??*

When 18-year-old Korean-American Chloe Chang’s best friends, Hazel and Seb (Sebastian), gift her a 23andMe test as a gag, Chloe has no expectations, though she desperately wants to know more about the father she never knew. It’s always been Chloe and her overworked mom, who often takes extra nursing shifts at the hospital to make ends meet, and even then, finances are tight. Chloe loves fashion, but fashion is something her mom sees as a hobby. Chloe gives new life to used clothing, selling the items on Etsy. In an unexpected turn of events, Chloe has a message through the 23andMe app, alerting her of a possible first cousin, someone named “Noh, Jin Young.” He states he and his family are excited to meet her, so suddenly, within a week after her high school graduation and against her mom’s wishes, she’s trading in “same old” Tulsa, Oklahoma, for bustling Seoul, Korea. And not only that, but the Seoul associated with the ultra rich. From flying first class to staying in a spacious guesthouse, to expensive dinners and even more expensive clothing, from healthy-food-conscious Mrs. Na (personal cook) to always-carries-an-umbrella Mr. Kim (private secretary). It turns out that Chloe’s dad’s family is chaebol, and they own Sam Won Department Store, which houses the top tier of high-end brands. Her halmoni (grandmother) is the intimidating matriarch (Chairwoman) who runs (rules) Sam Won with an iron fist. Her father’s family also includes two glamorous cousins, Jin Young and Soo Young, their mom, two uncles - one deceased and one who’s very ill and in need of a liver transplant - and Lady Cha, Chairwoman’s fortune teller (and she pays a fortune for her services). Chloe has finally found what she’s been wanting, possibly even more than her acceptance into FIT (Fashion Institute of Technology): a bigger family. But Chloe should be asking herself why the Nohs want her in Seoul in the first place. And in her haste to be accepted as a Noh, will she obliterate her relationship with her own mother?

            For viewers who love K-dramas, “The Noh Family” is a K-drama in literary form for those viewers who are also readers. There’s the expected drama and elitism, complete with willful jabs and downright rudeness. The novel explores classism, taking advantage of someone (albeit a naïve someone), finding acceptance with the family one has and what is, to the main character, primarily an unfamiliar culture, down to the knowledge that Korea remains a vastly patriarchal society (oh boy, that Bum Soo disgusts me). The novel does contain solid friendships, a kindred spirit (Miso) and a lot of heart. There’s glitz and glam, and the mentions of Korean food and their descriptions are absolutely *chef’s kiss*. It’s compelling and dazzling, worthy of a K-drama comparison, but I didn’t care for Chloe. I admit that I can’t empathize. I don’t know anyone from my birth family, but I have always been a part of a two-parent family with siblings I get along with, grandparents I am/was close to and aunts, uncles and cousins that I saw regularly growing up. I know I’m well-loved, and despite being the only non-Caucasian, I’ve not gone through an identity crisis. It also drives me batty how she doesn’t question the Nohs’ motive for wanting her in Korea so quickly. Hello?! No matter that there’s shared DNA, they are still complete strangers! But perhaps I’m too cynical.

Once Upon a K-Prom (May 17, 2022) by Kat Cho.

*This is a standalone novel.*

When they were 10, Elena Soo and Robbie Choi promised to go to prom together. They’re 17 now, and it’s been seven years since Elena has seen Robbie. Elena isn’t anti-prom; she’s “alterna-prom,” wanting students to donate to the West Pinebrook Community Center instead of spending exorbitant sums for prom tickets, dresses, etc., but the fact remains that she has no intention of attending prom. One day, Robbie shows up on her doorstep asking her to prom, which she declines. When Robbie shows up at her school the next day and drops an extravagant “promposal” on her, she’s mortified and flees. You see, in the years since Robbie’s family moved from Chicago to Korea, he’s become one-fifth of WDB, the biggest K-pop group on the planet. And Elena is just Elena. She’s the teenager always feeling like the invisible girl that people are always leaving behind. She’s always in someone else’s shadow, too. She never feels like she’s Elena Soo, but always “Ethan’s twin” or “Sarah’s/Esther’s/Allie’s sister.” With her own parents, her mother especially, she’s the castoff kid, the one relegated to the rickety stool at family gatherings. Robbie truly wants to reconnect with his childhood best friend, the person he could trust with all of his secrets, and his first crush, but the two don’t really know how to talk to each other anymore. Can the reserved, spotlight-avoiding Elena find a way to reconnect with pink-tinge haired, stylishly dressed, K-pop megastar Robbie despite the constant presence/threat of WDB managers, passionate fans (Constellations), online haters and relentless paparazzi?

            To lead, one does not need to have prior K-pop knowledge to read this story, but one should arrive ready to journey into a story with a varied cast of diverse characters, a blend of flirty banter and serious conversations balanced with a semi-frothy storyline that contains a crushing secret if it gets out, likeable lead characters, a K-pop group that’s easy to adore (like BTS, yep, I said that) and a backstage pass to the thrilling-but-tightly-regulated world of K-pop. The teenage world of finding your own voice and mean girls lends the story credible realism, though the K-pop connection can seem indulgent, but in a plausible and pleasing way. What bothers me the most is Elena’s frequent comparison of herself to others and always feeling like the forgotten, left out individual. In a real-life situation, I’d be questioning Elena’s relationships with family and friends to know why she has such strong emotions related to that mindset. Unfortunately, in the story, she can come across as a selfish brat (especially when Tia shares news that is awesome for Tia and her son). However, don’t let that put you at odds with this story. It remains a swoony, charming, clean romance that may make you want to go to prom again!

            P.S. I would like to see someone create a LEGO boutonniere worthy of a K-pop-centric prom. *finger hearts*