"Snowglobe" by Soyoung Park

Snowglobe (Feb. 27, 2024) by Soyoung Park.
   Joungmin Lee Comfort, translator.

<This is the first novel in a duology.>

Enter a world of endless winter, where the average temperature is -50˚F. Jeon Chobahm lives in a meager dwelling with her “older” twin brother, Ongi, their mom and their grandma, who’s experiencing more memory loss. The twins and their mom all work at the power plant, which produces electricity for their sector and, primarily, Snowglobe. Snowglobe exists under a vast dome. It’s a place where the temperature is climate-controlled, and most all of the residents are actors, their unscripted-but-edited lives broadcast 24/7 to the frozen wasteland outside of Snowglobe’s protected dome. (The only place where there aren’t cameras is the Yibonn family estate. Young Master Yi Bonwhe is the heir. His personal assistant is Yu Junguhn.) Snowglobe residents have all the luxurious things: fame, fortune, warmth. Chobahm dreams of becoming a director, but so far, she’s only received rejections to her applications. Her favorite Snowglobe show is The Goh Haeri Show, and she looks strikingly like the show’s star and Snowglobe’s most famous resident, Goh Haeri. On the night that Chobahm risks her life to get Jo Miryu to the clinic, she meets Cha Seol. Director Cha is a hugely successful director, the person she most admires “in the entire universe,” and she’s proposed that Chobahm become Haeri. Haeri’s committed suicide, but the show must go on. Chobahm now has a dream life inside Snowglobe, but at what cost to her identity? Because Director Cha tells her she isn’t Chobahm anymore; she’s Haeri.
        The climate-ravaged world sets the stage in this YA dystopia. Snowglobe looks like a dream, but the reality is a lie. What is the truth, even? This novel explores personal identity, surveillance and ethics through a main character lens whose ambitions, anger, questions and compassion read realistically. This page-turner transports readers to a complex world with a dark underbelly and societal inequality. It’s bleak, but not without truth and hope, though it’ll take digging to find. I look forward to the sequel in the Snowglobe duology.