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A tightly woven blend of myth, magic, and the ties of a found family. Ghosts that speak in smoke. Spirits with teeth like glass. A parasitic, soul-eating spirit worm has gone into a feeding frenzy, but all the Jong-ro Police Department’s violent crimes unit sees is a string of suicides. Except for Kim Han-gil, Seoul’s only spirit detective. He’s seen this before. He’ll do anything to stop another tragedy from happening, even if that means teaming up with Shin Yoonhae, the man Han-gil believes is responsible for the horrifying aftermath of his mother’s last exorcism. In their debut novella, Sam Kyung Yoo weaves a tale of mystical proportions that's part crime-thriller, part urban fantasy.
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**I was provided an electronic ARC from the publisher through NetGalley.**
Sam Kyung Yoo presents their debut novella, Small Gods of Calamity. Readers follow police detective Kim Han-gil who also happens to be Seoul's only spirit detective. Han-gil has been investigating a series of apparent suicides that the police department has been content to consider as open-and-shut cases. Han-gil has encountered this type of incident before and will team up with Shin Yoonjae, the man at the center of the previous occurrences, to avoid future tragedy.
Yoo includes casual queerness at all phases of this novella from Han-gil's bold proclamation of his bisexuality in conversation with his new police partner to the trans woman Han-gil is desperate to help and the doctor who uses they/them pronouns. Yoo never shies away from the realities regarding mixed reception for queerness, but that only made the representation more welcome and intentional.
I can be a bit of a hard sell on detective stories, but I do love the spirit detective plotline and our story focuses almost exclusively on this compared to the actual policework. I think this was a smart choice and contributed toward making a more enjoyable story for me. Yoo also managed to include a decent bit of character backstory while moving the plot forward steadily.
While this novella does have a satisfying conclusion, one could argue that the ending is actually a beginning. I would love to see Yoo continue to write more stories about Han-gil and Yoonjae as there is plenty of room for more in this world. Overall, I found this novella to be a fun introduction to both Yoo's writing and to Han-gil as a character. I look forward to exploring whatever Yoo chooses to write in the future.
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