“We are sailors on a ship on a deep, dark, unswimmable sea.”

This book is not going to be for everyone, and that’s ok. The good thing is, you’ll know by page 1 if this writing is for you, since it stays consistently abstract throughout.

Among astronauts, there’s a concept called the “overview effect”, or the profound cognitive shift that comes with looking down at the earth from space. They say it is characterized by "a state of awe with self-transcendent qualities, precipitated by a particularly striking visual stimulus.” This book is essentially an atmospheric 200 pages dedicated to sitting in that moment of surreal and cosmic wonder.

Following 6 astronauts aboard a spacecraft currently orbiting earth, it colorfully documents their mundane daily routines, their dreams, their worries, and the sensory experience of watching their home planet from above. Equal parts novel, poem, essay, and abstract art project, it is a quiet, reflective meditation on what it is to be human and in space, as well as what ties us to each other, to our home planet, and the rest of the vast universe.

There is no plot. There is no deep characterization. There is only slow orbiting, circling, hovering weightlessly over the earth and its inhabitants, the meandering reading experience a perfect mimicry of the spacecraft itself holding you suspended in time and space. It is a watercolor work that must be savored rather than binged, so that you can allow the dreamy imagery and contemplative thoughts to wash over you, leaving only a sense of hope and awe behind.

I can completely understand the repetition and purple prose not hitting for some people, but it fully resonated with me. It felt an apt stylistic choice, like your internal monologue sitting in a window seat on a plane, repeating the geographical landmarks you recognize over and over, and marveling at the vibrant beauty of the world from this rare vantage point. Sure, huge swaths of this book feel like narration that should be accompanied by generic National Geographic space footage. The observations here are not particularly complex or philosophical. But there’s also a commitment to aesthetics and a subtle emotional underpinning here that I find sort of beautiful too.

In a lot of ways, this is the perfect read for starting a new year when you’re already feeling reflective, instilling a sense of existential possibility and wonder at the world and our place in it. Highly recommend taking an edible and listening to the audiobook in the dark with a galaxy projector overhead. The vibes are unreal.

Disclaimer: This is going to be a haterade-fueled rant from someone who has historically not enjoyed what modern YA fantasy has to offer. I am aware I’m not the target audience — a lot of this will veer more towards venting than constructive criticism. You have been warned.

This book reads like fanfiction written for white teenagers who loved Spirited Away but can’t distinguish Korea from Japan.

Despite being based on a Korean myth, the story and characters follow your cookie-cutter Western YA “feminist” fantasy, including everything I personally find irritating, juvenile, and derivative about the genre. (The tropes are annoyingly YA, but the vocabulary and prose here is closer to middle-grade.) You’ve still got your spunky teenage heroine who everyone inexplicably trusts and admires despite having no beauty and no skill (her words). She also does things like yell at a nobleman while being a literal peasant girl, which you would think would be deeply disrespectful considering the cultural background she’s supposed to have. The love interest is another brooding immortal god inexplicably smitten with a random virginal teenager, as they all are, apparently. All the cultural context is stripped out to push a typical individualistic story about “follow your heart” self-actualization, just in a vaguely Asian flavor. I will cite the below interaction we’ve all seen a thousand times:

[FMC almost dies] [MMC states the obvious, that she is in danger] [FMC mouths off to him in a #girlboss #feminist way] [FMC muses, “there’s something in his eyes… is that… respect?”] 🙄🙄🙄

I found the characters poorly developed, the writing sloppy and amateurish, the overall tone juvenile and melodramatic, and the pacing so insanely fast to the point where plot points blur together from the sheer breakneck speed of events. The constant rush left me unable to process or get attached to anything, and while the fast pace keeps the momentum going, it also sacrifices character, plot development, and even basic coherence. I feel like the only reason you could form any connection to the story is because of general familiarity with genre conventions filling in the gaps.

We’re often moving so fast that the only way things happen is if they’re extremely convenient, and they are. There are plot holes abound, and the book tries to skim by quickly so you don’t notice, but it didn’t escape me how loosely the plot all fit together. Mina appears in the spirit realm, loses her soul, and immediately finds kind people totally willing to drop everything to take her where she needs to go. Mina needs to get into buildings that should be locked up, but are they? Nope, she always conveniently finds the doors cracked open for her. She gets attacked head-on and does she get hurt? Nope, a side character she literally met two days ago will valiantly take the hit for her. Everything always goes accordingly to plan for Mina, our super special chosen one main character.

On that note, there are literally no stakes. Even when Mina gets a minor injury, it’s immediately healed through the power of magic. What kind of magic? Doesn't matter, isn't explained. The story won’t let her risk anything important, and for that reason the narrative feels boring despite the insanely fast pace. The ending especially felt horrible. Far-fetched, melodramatic, and undid all semblance of character motivation that happened in the 300 pages before it. Engineered to get people sobbing with no justification, which I find cheap and tacky.

Mina is 16 but reads closer to 12, or even younger. She’s childish and clumsy and so, so dumb. She’s literally a Bella Swan-esque blank slate on which to self-project because she has no personality or distinguishing features of her own besides the stupidity to jump into the sea in the first place. The other characters are even worse as they are not developed at all, so it was impossible to connect with them. The villains especially made absolutely no sense motivation-wise and seemed to only materialize to drum up more momentum for the plot at strategic points where it was starting to drag. Otherwise, all the characters are interchangeable cardboard cutouts with no distinguishable personalities or motivations.

The romance was like watching paint dry if the paint actually got bored of itself too and occasionally left the room, with the kind of chemistry you have with a coworker you see once every 6 months and have to share adjacent cubicles with. They have nothing in common, know nothing about each other, yet somehow manage to fall for each other in just 4 weeks despite minimal interactions the entire book. Painfully dry and awkward, even for immortal god x teenage virgin standards. The soulmate trope is so often used as a crutch to avoid writing actual relationship development and moments of connection, and it is deployed here to similar effect.

This is rampant in the genre, but there was also an over-reliance on visual imagery as if this were describing a movie (which is what this wants to be) rather than a novel. There are pages on pages of descriptions of this world, every single building and room and furniture item, but almost no exploration of interiority for the characters. You see this in how characters are described too — they are described as very visually different but are written behaviorally very similar, which in text form makes them difficult to differentiate from each other. A lot of the imagery also borrows heavily from Spirited Away as well, especially in the beginning, which made it hard to see it as its own original story rather than Spirited Away fanfic.

Tangential rant: As an Asian-American person, I really love the idea of more Asian-inspired fantasy in theory (plus more Asian authors getting published) but the way it is often executed in commercial YA frustrates me as it makes me realize I am not the target audience, which is a sad thing to realize from a genre you want to love. These stories are still shaped by the cookie-cutter mold of popular Western YA fantasy with just the barest hint of “exotic” Asian flavoring to be easily consumable for white people in the exact shape they already consume all their content in, like throwing matcha into protein shakes and cupcakes. God forbid we have to step outside our comfort zone even a tiny bit when we read stories from other cultures. God forbid we leave behind American individualism as a default story arc and investigate the spirit of collectivism, for example. I’m also becoming increasingly irritated at how “Asian-coded fantasy” is starting to mean the same homogenous style-over-substance, should’ve-been-a-graphic-novel surrealist world with swirly colors, whimsical Ghibli imagery and royal courts that somehow functionally behave exactly the same as European royal courts despite drastically different cultures. It’s horribly unimaginative and limiting. This is obviously more of a complaint about the state of publishing and the current market demands rather than the authors themselves, but disappointing all-around.

TL;DR: She should’ve just drowned tbh

It was hard to rate this book, because it’s hard to rate any well-crafted book that I didn’t enjoy. I want to be clear that I’m definitely in the extreme minority based on the stellar reviews and the many awards this series has earned, so definitely keep in mind that my experience seems to be a rare one that is probably more reflective of me and my personal tastes than the book itself.

The good, which many people have already expounded on:

Jemison definitely has a clear creative vision and writes a story that executes on her thematic goals (which in this book I would say are to illustrate the burdens of immense power, motherhood, and generational trauma in a world of extreme inequality). Structurally, her writing takes risks and plays with reader expectations, and the plot is well-crafted on a technical level. The characters are unique, and the world-building is inventive, so in a genre known for feeling a bit derivative, it feels very distinct compared to everything else on offer.

But I think for a hugely beloved book like this, it’s less about “why did I give it 2.5 whole stars” and more about “why did I NOT give it 5 stars?” Honestly, it was just really hard for me to appreciate any of these good aspects because I absolutely did not enjoy the narrative style, and unfortunately, that permeates into literally every other facet of the book. I’ll start with my main complaints, starting from most subjective to least (but still very much) subjective.

Firstly, this is very much a personal preference and not indicative of quality at all, but I’ve realized Jemison’s writing style is just really not for me. I’ve read her book The City We Became too, and while I enjoyed that premise more simply because the NYC gimmick panders directly to me as a city resident, the writing there was still a huge sticking point for me. It seems to be a polarizing style in general, so I’m going to describe it as best I can in case anyone’s preferences align with my own and wants to know what to expect.

Jemison’s writing style is very stripped back, blunt, often gritty, with no floweriness or supporting exposition to ease you into the reading journey. There is an emphatic rejection of what she calls “polite abstraction” in favor of “vulgar actuality.” Refusing to let the reader romanticize even a single inch, she seems to want to reflect the inherent ugliness of the world in her work (whichever world she’s currently playing in) and often viscerally describes sweat, grime, mold, feces, fetid air, brutal violence, extreme poverty, bodies twisted by neglect and abuse, etc. (The hyper-fixation on filth in particular is a pattern in her descriptive writing, and it just doesn’t agree with me or my stomach.) There is a strong emphasis on heightened bodily sensations, even with the magic system, which brings an intense physicality to the storytelling. Thematically, she uses this raw physicality to explore the bleak effects of generational trauma, systemic oppression, large-scale violence, and societal cruelty.

All of this is presented with a heavier tone, and any shred of humor is limited to the occasional dry, ironic comment. While I wouldn’t call it overly dark in the vein of horror or anything, all of this put together still makes for a rather grim, stressful, uneasy reading experience that is really hard for me to call “enjoyment.” Not that everything needs to be, but this is not a “fun” read by any measure of the imagination — you will be made to sit with a high measure of discomfort all the way through, ranging from utter confusion to total disgust, and your tolerance of that will decide how rewarding this experience will be.

To be clear, I’m no stranger to more challenging reads — I can recognize when an author is intentionally trying to create discomfort, and god knows I certainly don’t require 100% sunshine rainbow vibes all the time, but constant misery against a backdrop of constant suffering creates what amounts to a flat, low-contrast emotional landscape that I find it dull and frankly exhausting to exist inside of. And then there are grating phrases like “cock on oily cock” 🥴 which were certainly memorable but in a truly negative way for me.

Again, this is my gut reaction to her stylistic choices and not necessarily a knock on the quality of the writing – this is clearly what she’s going for, and it seems a fitting choice for both the subject matter at hand and the way that she wants to explore it. Art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable after all. I see the vision! My tastes just lean toward prose that can be described as “lyrical” and “lush” even when exploring darker topics rather than “visceral” and “grounded.” I have to be in a very specific headspace to appreciate the latter, and to be honest, I’m not sure I’ll ever really be in the headspace to reach for Jemison’s particular brand again as every reading session left me feeling vaguely nauseous and in need of a bath (there’s a lot of grime in this book).

Still, I think I would’ve been able to put aside my personal reaction to the stylistic choices here if I still managed to care deeply about the characters and the journey. The fact that I was unable to boil down to a few specific things:

One particularly controversial narrative choice here is the use of the second-person perspective. I usually love second-person when it’s done well, but its use here feels mostly gimmicky to me, especially because it’s only retroactively justified via a very late-breaking reveal at the end of the book. It just feels like a cheap trick to jumpstart reader engagement by arbitrarily obscuring information with an unusual writing choice and withholding emotional closeness with the character for drama without any attempt to supplement the characterization to fit the form, and it really didn’t work for me. As @brandanadei said in her review, second-person is hard to execute because it’s both intimate and distancing – there can be intimacy in being directly addressed as a reader, but also further distance in that we don’t get the benefit of the character behaving as if they're not being watched or expressing themselves in their own words. We don’t get any intimacy here – the voice in these chapters generally just feels disembodied and flat, to the detriment of reader connection with the character. Who is this person outside of the actions they’re you’re currently carrying out? It starts to read like a robotic text-based video game where the constant “you do this and then this” in the narration makes it feel strangely empty despite the emotional stakes supposedly present. By the time it’s explained why the second-person perspective is used, it has already affected too much of the story and characterization for me to appreciate how clever the choice was, because it feels way too late to justify what was a core stylistic choice from page 1.

This was especially an issue for me because the other two POVs also felt incredibly flat and detached in their own way, despite being written in third person. Is there an in-universe reason for this? Sure. Trauma. Naturally. All three POV characters are (understandably) scarred by their brutal life experiences, and the result is, apparently, three almost identically emotionless narration styles that made it difficult for me to care about them as characters because they’re all remarkably removed from the events of their own lives. I found them all pretty unsympathetic, but this was exacerbated by the fact that I couldn’t even relate to them when I was inside their own heads. They all felt so lifeless narratively that there was no humanity or vulnerability for me to latch onto to be able to say “ah yes, now I can somewhat understand being an unrepentant mass murderer.” I never cared enough about any single POV to want to keep turning the page, making reading this feel like a total chore.

Also, I had guessed the plot “twist” extremely early on, so my ability to be mind-blown by the reveal was very limited. Based on others’ reviews, I think this was a big part of people’s enjoyment of the book that I just didn’t get to experience. It was frustrating to have guessed it 5% into the book and then have to wait so long for the slow reveal. Felt very prolonged in an unsatisfying way, like the author was just refusing to address something that had been very clear to me for several hundred pages. However, I think not knowing about the twist at all would’ve dampened my emotional investment even further, so part of me is glad I at least had that to hold onto.

Finishing this book was a real struggle for me, but I can understand what people see in this book and appreciate what Jemison is trying to do, even if it was not for me. In many ways, I am at the very least glad to see an experimental, diverse, and queernormative fantasy be so well received, which is why the dedication of the book is the part that worked the most for me: “For all those who have to fight for the respect that everyone else is given without question.” This is a great summary of what living life is like with a marginalized identity, and I'm sure it hits home for many readers.