Reviews

A Corpse in the Koryo by James Church

pulchro24's review against another edition

adventurous mysterious medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

sandin954's review against another edition

2.0

This book has garnered rave reviews from just about everyone so I was really looking forward to reading it but really had to struggle to finish it. The setting in North Korea was interesting and the main character was pretty well fleshed out but I did not care for the structure of the story and thought the plot was really rather weak.

beth_diiorio's review against another edition

2.0

This book did not appeal to me as much as I thought it would...a bit dry, redundant, and whiny!

blissfulbookworm's review against another edition

1.0

I SO wanted to like this book---I loved the premise, especially since I really enjoyed Child 44, another novel where Cold War politics & communism conflict with a detective's moral compass and desire to find out the truth behind murder (North Korea is the setting for A Corpse in the Koryo, and Russia for Child 44). Unfortunately, the writing in Corpse is a totally uninspired quagmire of boring dialogue and rambling thoughts. I couldn't care less about any of the events happening in the book, and the author failed to ever build up a sense of suspense or engagement. Perhaps it's because James Church (pseudonym) is a former Western intelligence officer with experience in Asia---perhaps he should have kept his day job...

maizu's review against another edition

slow-paced

1.75

Omaan makuun hiukan liian sekava kirja, sai kuitenkin luettua loppuun.
Pidin kirjan kannesta paljon ja Pohjois-Korea kiinnostaa aiheena. Voisin kuvitella hyvin elämän olevan tälläistä, kuinka se on kirjassa kuvailtu.

margaretefg's review against another edition

3.0

I like Inspector O, his combination of loyalty and skepticism. I don't always understand what's going on in the books, even when I get to the end...but somehow the journey through the maze of North Korean politics is worth it.

usbsticky's review against another edition

1.0

This was a GR or library book recommendation. The first 2 chapters contained 2 of my pet peeves.

1) The books starts off in the middle of an operation. It doesn't explain who the narrator is, what he does, what country he's in, etc.

2) Chapter 2 starts a completely new POV in italics. What are the italics supposed to mean? A dream sequence? Parallel universe? Again, thrown into the middle of an event without explanation.

Dnf'd at 4%. What a waste of time. If you are an author, give the reader a frame of reference so he can settle into the book. Not having a frame of reference in chapter 1 was bad enough, having to restart in chapter 2 is worse.

lisagoe's review against another edition

4.0

This was more akin to a LeCarre novel than the mysteries I generally read. The prose was spare and the action and its significance a little impenetrable. I read this quickly to be done before I left my uncle's house and I feel like I may have missed some bits, but I liked the atmospherics. In short, I couldn't make sense of the conclusion but I felt like it was my own fault for not connecting the dots. The impenetrability of the thing is kind of the point because it gives you a sense of the bureaucracy and the brokenness of the North Korean state. It was very competently done and I feel like it merits a re read or at least I would read a sequel and see if it got any clearer.

m4rtt4's review against another edition

adventurous challenging mysterious medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.0

The back cover was promising, and so were the first 100 pages, but there were too many characters with too little backstories that weren't explained and so I wasn't able to wholly grasp what exactly happened in this book.
Also there were so many, too many references to Finland and Finnish people :/ As a Finnish person, I usually find the mentions of our country to be a pleasant surprise, but there were Finnish things and boring stereotypes on like every other page of the book..

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Violence and Murder

Moderate: Gun violence and Death

Minor: War and Death of parent

bookcraft's review against another edition

2.0

I have...no strong feelings about this book at all. Sometimes it felt like it wanted to be noir, but other times not so much. The setting could have been anywhere, and the characters anyone; it was a pencil sketch of a story — which, for the right story and in the hands of the right author, can be an amazing thing, but a complex political murder mystery is not the right story, and since that's the case I'm not going to try to judge whether James Church is the right author.

I wasn't invested in Inspector O, and to be frank I didn't even really care about the solution to the mystery. I listened all the way through because the book was there and it wasn't awful or offensive or anything. It was just...dull. It took place in an unadorned white box of a setting. I suppose that could be intentional, mirroring the spartan lives of North Koreans in a communist dictatorship, but I suspect it's just that Church cares more about intricate plot details than he does about fleshing out setting and characters.