DREAMT I FOUND YOU, lovely, evocative title indeed

DREAMT I FOUND YOU
JIMIN HAN
Little Brown and Company (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$14.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: From the critically acclaimed author of The Apology, a contemporary retelling of Korea’s Romeo & Juliet, in which the cousin of the star-crossed lovers helps them avoid a tragic fate.

When Dahee Shin was nine years old, she made a promise to protect her favorite cousin, Channing, who has always been like a sister to her. Now, at thirty, Dahee has found herself in a Korean American community in a New England beach town, once more running to the rescue of her debt-ridden relative.

Ever the idealist, Channing—who has spent her life haunted by the tragic story of Chunhyang and Mongryong, Korea’s parallel Romeo & Juliet—has fallen in love with Minjae Oh, all the while fending off the advances of powerful, manipulative Kent Cho, a local politician. As Channing and Minjae’s romance blossoms, and as Kent's suspicion and obsession grow, Dahee begins to realize that it may be up to her to make sure her cousin and beloved escape Chunhyang and Mongryong’s doomed end.

For fans of Hello Beautiful, Dreamt I Found You is a wondrous, tender retelling of Korea's most classic love story, steeped in the travails of a rigid class system, the power of premonition, and shot through with Korean folklore and magic.

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My Review: A double shot of romantic emotional caffeine. The story of Chunhyang and Mongryong, then the modern-day Korean diaspora story that evokes it, all juxtaposed with subtlety against the bog-standard Murrikin's understanding of Romeo & Juliet and set on the New England coast.

All of this is just fine, sure I'll read it no problem; what made me want to tell y'all about it, is that I saw more parallels to Shakespeare in Love than to Romeo & Juliet. I myownself found that *more* appealing not less so. I know I'll get body-checked into the glass (I need to stop reheating Heated Rivalry) for saying this, but stop telling me I must love Shakespeare's foreign-language drama with its now-stock characters for the depth of his insight. That depth has been added over the course of almost half a millennium of studying analyzing and commenting on the source text! We "know" it's there because so so many people have already "found" it and told us about it. It's now cultural shorthand in Anglophone cultures (possibly others but I have no direct access to those). "It's the Korean Romeo & Juliet" is not an analysis, it's an emotional appeal to the Anglophone reader's cultural furniture.

Author Han has very cannily gotten us Anglophones to do the hard work of buying in to her story in one fell swoop with this (apt, it seems to me) evocation of the very slightly older (c. 1591 versus c. 1694) iteration of the eternal star-crossed lovers story. I was primed by the clearly stated link between this modern-day version and its historical antecedents. I got the expected frisson from the love-conquers-all story, spiced up by the deeply satisfying comeuppance of a crappy human being. Beats there a heart so cold as to not race just a little when the lovers defeat a rotten, jealous monster?

I think not, at least not outside the ranks of the aromantic.

It's the beating heart of the story told here, that tension between what we're expecting, what we know, and what's happening on the page. While Minjae and Channing and Dahee and Kent do their literary gavotte with all its showy back-and-forths, its little hops and leg-pointings, and its apparently endless—at times feeling relentless—repetitions of the same movements to no internal resolution, the external story outline we've applied from long, long cultural familiarity serves as the musical accompaniment that grants us the readers as well as them the characters a stopping place.

I did say stopping place, not ending. The thing about a gavotte is that it's a folk dance all dressed up for aristocratic slumming, so it never develops beyond stylish-looking moves that show the dancers' stamina more than their grace. In Dreamt I Found You the characters are set a task...fall in love, overcome an obstacle, help or obstruct these actions...and repeat that task against a variations-on-a-theme backdrop. It's a time-tested technique that keeps on working because the specifics are fungible as a result of the audience's investment being all but assured. It requires little character development. All that is handled by the evocative models folloed, the stpes of the dance known to most all of us.

The "music" that provides the pace in Dreamt I Found You is the US culture on display. It must be said that culture is not shown to great advantage, but it also isn't deeply explored by the characters' interactions. They all execute the steps, do the hops, make the gestures; nothing derails their actions. The jolts and surprises are few because they're built into both model storys' bones and are well known to us. It doesn't really feel surprising, the biggest tension is will this be Shakespeare's tragedy or Korea's re/union?

Reading it to find out is the pleasure of discovery on offer. I resonated to the story, I liked the author's choice of which model to emulate, and at the end of the dance I bowed to my book-shaped partner and led him off the dance floor admiring how handsomely he had done the dance with me.

THE AWL, Korean Manha of labor trouble like we're having

THE AWL Vol. 1
CHOI GYU-SEOK (tr. Lynn Eskow)
Ablaze Publishing (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$14.99 all editions, available now

Rating: 3.75* of five

The Publisher Says: The Awl is a story of ordinary folks struggling to be treated as humans.

Set in the latter half of the 2000s, against the backdrop of “Pureumi”, a fictional superstore chain in South Korea, the work unfolds with a focus on two protagonists: Yi Su-in, who has been instructed by the corporation to dismiss workers unjustly; and Gu Go-sin, a labor activist.

A man of principles, Su-in is someone who cannot restrain outspoken criticism and is constantly at odds with the world. Though he has quit a career in the armed forces to live quietly and chosen an ordinary job, he once again clashes against the world because the company has ordered him to drive out employees by force.

Aiding Su-in is Go-sin, a cool-headed and deft labor activist who runs a labor counseling center near the Pureumi chain. Unlike Su-in, who has difficulty getting along with people and sternly sticks to rules, he approaches others without hesitation and even resorts to extreme measures at times to accomplish goals.

Together, Su-in and Go-sin will oppose the manipulation and moral harassment to which the employees are cynically subjected. The process through which these two figures remind ordinary, diligent workers of their rights and bring change together will fire up readers.

Remarkable in mastery and brilliance, author Choi Gyu-seok (The Hellbound) depicts with finesse all the adventures of this shock of two worlds, and at the same time offers an amazing portrait of a complex Korean society, crossed by multiple tensions.

Proof that popular works can also be created based on social topics, The Awl has left an indelible mark on South Korean comics. Entertaining and moving at the same time, The Awl remains a monumental work in the nation’s comics, consummate in its artistry, while conveying an important social message.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: I'm the target audience for this story. I had a hard time following it because my sequential-art skills are pretty poor. I'm working to get myself past that barrier, but this story challenged my determination hard. I can't get to a full four stars because if I, fully on the side of these union guys, can't keep focused, what's the less-convinced reader going to do?

It seems odd to provide the US-market reviewers with Korean language artwork.

Nonetheless, I found the story of a man in corporate slavery, I mean work, with a functional conscience and a powerful moral compass, refreshing; I appreciated the PoV of the street-tough union organizer being humanized, as well.

It's not for everyone, but the ones it's for should know it exists.

TEO'S DURUMI, second queer-Korean-culture space opera in The Alliance duology

TEO'S DURUMI (The Alliance #2)
ELAINE U. CHO
Zando | Hillman Grad (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$14.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: The dazzling sequel to Ocean’s Godori dives back into Elaine U. Cho’s cinematic space opera series, taking Ocean and her crew deep into the cloisters of the Moon and the conflicts of the heart.

Teo Anand, former ne’er-do-well second son of the Anand Tech empire and current solar fugitive, has just crash-landed on the Moon after escaping the latest attempt on his life. But if anyone can help exonerate him, it’s his best friend, bold Korean space pilot Ocean Yoon.

Falsely accused of murdering his family, Teo is running out of both time and options. But loyalties are uncertain in their group of steadfast comrades and tentative new allies, and it’s difficult to know who to trust in the tangled web that awaits them in Artemis, a city on the Moon rich in Korean history and haunted by ghosts from Teo’s and Ocean’s pasts. Further complicating matters are Haven—the pensive medic whose beliefs challenge Ocean’s—and the dashing Phoenix—a space raider who’s come blazing into Teo’s life in more ways than one.

All the while Corvus, the real culprit behind the slaying of the Anands, is sowing a path of destruction that threatens to swallow the solar whole. The crew will wrestle with clashing ideals, flying bullets, and undeniable feelings, as they race toward a stunning final stand.

Teo’s Durumi brings Cho’s space opera duology to an exhilarating close, one that contends with questions of identity and acceptance; grief and redemption; and loyalty and sacrifice, as Teo, Ocean, and the people they love will decide once and for all how to forge their paths into the future.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: The ending of Ocean’s Godori, both exciting and amusing, gets one's attention for sure and certain. I enjoyed it enough that I immediately upon receiving this DRC opened it and dove in.

Some of y'all are chuckling....

Literally minutes after the end of the previous book, we're into a new narrative regime. Teo's troubles are now preoccupying Ocean and Teo (and Haven, remember them?) with their awesome scoobygroup of really good people. Permaybehaps it's because I never had a family that included me that I've spent my life making family where I was and the stories I gravitate toward are those of made/found family.

Here's a very good example to follow...people who give their all to a goal they share, negotiate within the framework of making "it" work for all...and pulling for things in their orbit to end up better than they start. It doesn't hurt that their Big Bad, Corvus (really authors let the crow/raven clan alone now!), practically twirls mustachios like a silent-film caricature. Really, my one big eyerolly quibble in the books is Corvus' supervillainy being So Very Overplayed. (Well, that and the KDrama yearning between Ocean and Haven being protracted beyond slow-burn, though that does finally end.) I'm sure some of y'all will find the first third of the book being mostly sitting and talking, plotting and planning, kind of...overlong...but stick with it, or better yet read the books back-to-back with no interruption. That is my best suggestion to avoid any hint of a sense of sag in the story.

Phoenix (who, curiously, comes from a background like Corvus' but is somehow not a lunatic murderous sleaze, and I'm left to wonder why) and Teo are very effectively counterpointing our swoony-yearny-KDrama pair. I'm pleased that they have more than what Joseph Campbell called (in that memorable Bill Moyers series) "the zeal of the organs for each other," but equally pleased they're not shilly-shallying around. Lest I leave someone with the wrong impression, this story is not steamy. It's passionate, just not graphic, more the "fire flickered and died" way.

Multiple PoV storylines are often fraught with pacing issues and there's no exception here; I was expecting it so came into the read prepared. As a result the issues I outlined above emerge from this central one. Polyphonic novels do best when everyone in them heads for different places, where in this novel we are going to crash into the same place as is evident from the get-go. S why not use an omniscient narrator, or close third-person narration? I didn't *get* this choice.

Considered on a craft level, I'm at three stars; considered on an emotional satisfaction level, four-plus; considered on a delivery of what was promised from page on of book one level, four.

Elaine U. Cho can write well and frequently does. I hope she has many more opportunities to do it.