Speechless. I'll be back to write a proper review later, but wow. What an intense celebration of grief, memory, and what it means to be human. —— REVIEW: This book absolutely blew me away. From the very first page, we're drawn into a near-future reunified Korea that is equal parts apocalyptic and utopian. There's intense optimism for a better, brighter future amid the chaos and pain from the reunification war, strongly reflective of the aftermath of the real Korean war. And while we're in a future populated by fantastical tech and robots almost indistinguishable from humans, we're still very recognizably in Seoul with its distinctive neighborhoods and that ever-lingering presence of both the cultural past and the worldly present. We follow a number of POVs, but the primary ones are Jun, a trans bionic survivor of the war; his sister Morgan, a roboticist creating eerily lifelike commercial robot children; and Ruijie, a disabled girl who befriends some version of Jun and Morgan's long-lost robot brother, Yoyo. It's easy to say this is a story about what it means to be human, because of course it is. That's pretty much the whole genre. But Luminous really considers the transcendence of humanity, particularly in regards to the body, to disability, and to grief. Jun's relationship to his own body is already complicated by his transness and his dysphoria, but after his war injury renders him largely bionic, he's even further distanced from his physical self despite being more masculine that his biological body could have allowed. Ruijie dreams of becoming bionic herself, as her body slowly fails her and surgery seems like a distant dream. Socially inept Morgan builds her own robot boyfriend in a humiliating effort to find human connection, and he, separated from the robot network, heads down a dark rabbit hole of self-discovery. Finally, there's Yoyo, the eternal child, holding onto memories of past selves and existing as a memory more than as a real person; but was he ever a real person? And which is realer, the person who used to exist, or the memory of him? These characters' stories tangle together with the help of Park's incredible prose, and is in turns dark and funny and thoughtful. Jun and Morgan are real, messy, complex characters with such depth, and while the question lingers on whether robots experience humanity, or are something more or better, the heart of this story is in the emotion around Yoyo's loss, how the two siblings experience their grief, and the neverending impact (maybe the immortality? is that beyond human, too?) of someone who isn't with you anymore. Truly a fantastic debut and I cannot wait to see what Park writes next.

LUMINOUS by Silvia Park is a beautifully written, literary sci-fi/spec fic masterpiece. While the book itself is crime-focused, most of the story, to me, is a meditation on what makes a human a human, and what makes a robot a robot. These are themes often explored in cyberpunk/sci-fi, but I think Park navigates the nuances and complexities with an extra thread of depth I have not seen before. The worldbuilding in this book hooked me right away, particularly how it affects Jun, a trans male character, who has had to navigate being trans in a AFAB body, then - by the time the story starts - becoming a hugely bionic person after suffering extreme injuries in the military. I'd read an entire series about Jun. Seriously. He's awesome - and not with out his flaws, either. He can be bratty, especially how he treats his sister, Morgan. Morgan, too, is flawed, and her relationship with her personalized and created robot boyfriend, Stephen, reveals a lot of her self-centeredness and the ramifications it has on Stephen's development. Speaking of development - who knew robots could be so complex? The first robots I remember caring about in fiction were C-3PO and R2D2 in Star Wars, but even they weren't this diverse and complex. I LOVED how Park humanized robots while still making it clear they are robots and are NOT humans. This shines with Stephen and Yoyo's portrayals. However, the very fact that Robo-Crimes exist as a unit in the police force make it clear that Robots may not be human, but they're not undeserving of justice, either. Taewon and Ruijie had great POVs too, though perhaps not as much screen time as Jun and Morgan. Ruijie is a young girl with MS who wants a robot companion as her care taker. Taewon is a wry, cynical, troubled kid who has been alienated from his peers - no different from how many of the population alienates robots. Man, Taewon was such an unlikeable character at first, but Park really changed my mind about him. I feel for him. I really do. I do feel like there's a touch more story to be told, like the ending is missing 30 or so pages to wrap up these stories gracefully. But y'know what, for a debut, this was phenomenal. Looking forward to reading more of Park's work. 4.75/5 stars