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A review by billblume
Rebel Seoul by Axie Oh
4.0
While I didn't get to this book within 2017, Rebel Seoul was one of my most anticipated books to read from last year. The book was compared a lot to Pacific Rim and K-Dramas, and it sounds like a damn good combo. So does it live up to that promise?
The book takes its time getting to the giant robots, which are called GMs (short for God Machines). The giant war machines first appear quite a few chapters into the book in a lengthy scene with the main character and several others participating in a virtual reality, training simulation. The simulation delivers some real-world stakes, because if any of them die in the simulation, they'll be shot and killed in the real world. I loved this part of the book. The training sequence offers some good action while providing useful insight into a lot of the world-building.
The world-building in this book is excellent. We're given a world that has suffered through a very long series of wars. Not only does Neo Seoul face threats from without, but the regime is struggling to pacify a growing uprising while keeping the magnitude of this threat hidden from the public.
For all the talk of war, though, the book doesn't include as many battles as I expected. That did disappointment me a bit. There's a good reason a lot of the combat is glossed over, though. I'll get to that in a moment.
That leads me to the characters. The book includes a great cast. Jaewon provides an interesting point-of-view for the book. He's just starting to earn a place in the military when he and his friend Alex are assigned to oversee a pair of young ladies who have been enhanced through a series of long and unethical experiments. But Jaewon has plenty of his own secrets that threaten his life as he gets more invested in and attracted to Tera, the enhanced "weapon" he's assigned to. Often, a main character with a lot of purposefully hidden secrets from the reader creates a problem, but Jaewon is the type of individual who is so focused on the moment, that it doesn't come across unnatural for him to leave out details about his past until they become immediately relevant. Jaewon and the revelations of his past provide the best drama within this book.
The only complaint I have about Jaewon is that he keeps missing key battle scenes. The big action sequence at the beginning of the book provides the best fight scenes involving the GMs, although, technically, they aren't real. They're part of a training simulation. Just as we're about to see most of the key conflicts, Jaewon is often conveniently knocked unconscious. He reminds me a bit of Bilbo Baggins at the end of [b:The Hobbit|5907|The Hobbit|J.R.R. Tolkien|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1372847500s/5907.jpg|1540236], when he misses the entire big battle. I really would have loved to see Jaewon in one last big fight scene while operating a GM, but that never happens.
The plot includes many layers of conspiracy, and perhaps the most impressive thing Axie Oh accomplishes is making it easy to keep track of all those twists. She manages not to leave the reader confused as she pulls the threads apart.
Overall, I think the book delivers more on the K-Drama aspect than the Pacific Rim comparison. There's always a chance that the next book might deliver more of the action, but it's pretty clear that the real story for Rebel Seoul focuses on the personal conflicts of these characters and less on the political/military struggles of the world they inhabit. Fortunately, the cast is filled with some well-developed characters who keep the book entertaining and fast-paced for the entire ride. Definitely recommend this book, and I'm looking forward to see what Axie Oh has planned next.
The book takes its time getting to the giant robots, which are called GMs (short for God Machines). The giant war machines first appear quite a few chapters into the book in a lengthy scene with the main character and several others participating in a virtual reality, training simulation. The simulation delivers some real-world stakes, because if any of them die in the simulation, they'll be shot and killed in the real world. I loved this part of the book. The training sequence offers some good action while providing useful insight into a lot of the world-building.
The world-building in this book is excellent. We're given a world that has suffered through a very long series of wars. Not only does Neo Seoul face threats from without, but the regime is struggling to pacify a growing uprising while keeping the magnitude of this threat hidden from the public.
For all the talk of war, though, the book doesn't include as many battles as I expected. That did disappointment me a bit. There's a good reason a lot of the combat is glossed over, though. I'll get to that in a moment.
That leads me to the characters. The book includes a great cast. Jaewon provides an interesting point-of-view for the book. He's just starting to earn a place in the military when he and his friend Alex are assigned to oversee a pair of young ladies who have been enhanced through a series of long and unethical experiments. But Jaewon has plenty of his own secrets that threaten his life as he gets more invested in and attracted to Tera, the enhanced "weapon" he's assigned to. Often, a main character with a lot of purposefully hidden secrets from the reader creates a problem, but Jaewon is the type of individual who is so focused on the moment, that it doesn't come across unnatural for him to leave out details about his past until they become immediately relevant. Jaewon and the revelations of his past provide the best drama within this book.
The only complaint I have about Jaewon is that he keeps missing key battle scenes. The big action sequence at the beginning of the book provides the best fight scenes involving the GMs, although, technically, they aren't real. They're part of a training simulation. Just as we're about to see most of the key conflicts, Jaewon is often conveniently knocked unconscious. He reminds me a bit of Bilbo Baggins at the end of [b:The Hobbit|5907|The Hobbit|J.R.R. Tolkien|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1372847500s/5907.jpg|1540236], when he misses the entire big battle. I really would have loved to see Jaewon in one last big fight scene while operating a GM, but that never happens.
The plot includes many layers of conspiracy, and perhaps the most impressive thing Axie Oh accomplishes is making it easy to keep track of all those twists. She manages not to leave the reader confused as she pulls the threads apart.
Overall, I think the book delivers more on the K-Drama aspect than the Pacific Rim comparison. There's always a chance that the next book might deliver more of the action, but it's pretty clear that the real story for Rebel Seoul focuses on the personal conflicts of these characters and less on the political/military struggles of the world they inhabit. Fortunately, the cast is filled with some well-developed characters who keep the book entertaining and fast-paced for the entire ride. Definitely recommend this book, and I'm looking forward to see what Axie Oh has planned next.