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A review by lm19
A Crane Among Wolves by June Hur
dark
hopeful
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
3.75
Overall a truly interesting book about a terrible period in Korean history. The first half of the book was the stronger portion for me but that might be because I never really bought into the romance between the main leads. It just ended up feeling forced and the turn from “enemies” to lovers didn’t flow as naturally as it could have been depicted. There also seemed to be too many easy plot conveniences in the second half that just felt lazy? I don’t usually advocate for longer books but maybe additional pages could have let the introduction of characters like “Crow” flow better.
I also wish that we got more of the actual coup from Daehyun’s perspective and even that there were more scenes with Yeonsan in the second half - he really just kind of disappeared towards the end. And in a way I almost wanted Yeonsan to be worse? He certainly did horrible things but so much was “told” and not enough was “show” to really build him into the terrible antagonist he was in real life.
But in general a strong book that could have been even better with some changes to the second half.
I also wish that we got more of the actual coup from Daehyun’s perspective and even that there were more scenes with Yeonsan in the second half - he really just kind of disappeared towards the end. And in a way I almost wanted Yeonsan to be worse? He certainly did horrible things but so much was “told” and not enough was “show” to really build him into the terrible antagonist he was in real life.
But in general a strong book that could have been even better with some changes to the second half.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Animal death, Sexual violence, Slavery, and Violence