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gyeranbbang 's review for:
To the Warm Horizon
by Jin-Young Choi
I had high expectations for this one (I blame the gorgeous cover), but it felt sort of pointless? It was very but not really character-focused, yet I did not understand anybody's goals, strategies, or logic.
I felt Choi did not give us a good enough description of the dystopian scene either - it felt they all needed to be desperate, but why? The main character had the chance to get food and only grabbed a couple of cans, I guess food is not an issue. There is a virus killing everyone, but there's no information about the symptoms nor how people get it. I don't get why people were leaving their countries, I don't get why people moved in groups, I don't get the new "international conflict" that is mentioned at the end, etc. I felt this lacked world-building and otherwise if this had had a desperate landscape or a proper explanation about what was happening in the world (rather than just a paragraph that had no logic, in my personal opinion), this would be really good.
Before I leave this sad review here, I just want to mention the translator Soje is awesome and she has this really cool e-zine named Chogwa that y'all should check out. It has Korean-to-English translators doing their own take at the same poem/work, and it's super interesting how the way they interpret it impacts the words they pick. I really wanted to love this because I think Soje is such a cool individual, but I hope the next work I choose (translated by her) rocks my world.
Trigger warnings:
I felt Choi did not give us a good enough description of the dystopian scene either - it felt they all needed to be desperate, but why? The main character had the chance to get food and only grabbed a couple of cans, I guess food is not an issue. There is a virus killing everyone, but there's no information about the symptoms nor how people get it. I don't get why people were leaving their countries, I don't get why people moved in groups, I don't get the new "international conflict" that is mentioned at the end, etc. I felt this lacked world-building and otherwise if this had had a desperate landscape or a proper explanation about what was happening in the world (rather than just a paragraph that had no logic, in my personal opinion), this would be really good.
Before I leave this sad review here, I just want to mention the translator Soje is awesome and she has this really cool e-zine named Chogwa that y'all should check out. It has Korean-to-English translators doing their own take at the same poem/work, and it's super interesting how the way they interpret it impacts the words they pick. I really wanted to love this because I think Soje is such a cool individual, but I hope the next work I choose (translated by her) rocks my world.
Trigger warnings: