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Roadkill
An effervescent speculative short story collection by South Korean author Amil for the next generation who crave a fresh perspective.
With strong roots in feminist science fiction and fantasy, Roadkill is for the next generation of readers of speculative fiction who love to be transported to different worlds but also crave a fresh perspective. Featuring dystopian wastelands, shamans, self-driving cars, tusked water deer and a divine sea serpent, these six stylistically distinct stories form a sweeping collection that explores contemporary subjects such as the climate crisis, Korean idol culture and techno capitalism through the lives of young women, their friendships and desire for self-expression.
Translated from the Korean by Archana Madhavan
With strong roots in feminist science fiction and fantasy, Roadkill is for the next generation of readers of speculative fiction who love to be transported to different worlds but also crave a fresh perspective. Featuring dystopian wastelands, shamans, self-driving cars, tusked water deer and a divine sea serpent, these six stylistically distinct stories form a sweeping collection that explores contemporary subjects such as the climate crisis, Korean idol culture and techno capitalism through the lives of young women, their friendships and desire for self-expression.
Translated from the Korean by Archana Madhavan
256 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2021
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374 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
September 2, 2025
I have found yet another brilliant Korean author and this book of 6 short stories is a pretty stellar collection. With bold, vibrant irresistibly charming pink cover & the gorgeous illustration, I was attracted by the design at first then the synopsis caught my attention. Amil crafted an interesting stories centred around women trapped in their suffocating tradition & culture while subjected to the strict regime of the society that dictated their rights to freedom. With stories like this, I knew I would love this one and I was proven right. Opening with Roadkill, the titular main story of a group of young girls said to be the last human women kept in a facility, a young tribal shaman communicate with researchers on their tribe's customs, a wife suffering from depression moved into a new housing apartment far from other people, the Grand Alps Park community where air purified tower erected and deemed as the perfect place for pure air away from pollution zone, series of unknown montages of unnamed narrator looking for a mysterious author and a maiden to be sacrified to the sea serpent for village'a safety
In this book, the women are bound & shackled by others, trapped in the world created to restrain them, from the abuse of a husband, to the man wanting to control them as they need to be the perfect women to bear children where the world are changing, to the grandmother physically hit & abuse the young girl expected to bear the shamanistic custom to the sacrificial of young maiden to the God they served for their own protection. The stories set in dystopian world, with a blend of science fiction & dark fairytale while fantastical still rooted to the real life issues. It was distressing & demeaning, it enraged me by the treatment these women faced. But there are the quiet strengths to these characters as the girls escaped to live their life, the wife finally wake up from the psychological manipulation her older husband, Rabi finally decided to take her own life into the matter after being forced to learn the shaman tradition, a psychological haunting narrative told mysteriously of the power of language & words created by an author. These stories are hauntingly beautiful, horrifyingly violent in ways that Amil created in making the readers uncomfortable and angry. These women are not damsels in distress, needing warriors & heroes to save them with failures to escape yet perseverance to break free from the constraints even after they failed numerous times.
Thank you Definitely Books for the review copy
In this book, the women are bound & shackled by others, trapped in the world created to restrain them, from the abuse of a husband, to the man wanting to control them as they need to be the perfect women to bear children where the world are changing, to the grandmother physically hit & abuse the young girl expected to bear the shamanistic custom to the sacrificial of young maiden to the God they served for their own protection. The stories set in dystopian world, with a blend of science fiction & dark fairytale while fantastical still rooted to the real life issues. It was distressing & demeaning, it enraged me by the treatment these women faced. But there are the quiet strengths to these characters as the girls escaped to live their life, the wife finally wake up from the psychological manipulation her older husband, Rabi finally decided to take her own life into the matter after being forced to learn the shaman tradition, a psychological haunting narrative told mysteriously of the power of language & words created by an author. These stories are hauntingly beautiful, horrifyingly violent in ways that Amil created in making the readers uncomfortable and angry. These women are not damsels in distress, needing warriors & heroes to save them with failures to escape yet perseverance to break free from the constraints even after they failed numerous times.
Thank you Definitely Books for the review copy
August 16, 2025
Roadkill is the translation by Archana Madhavan of 로드킬 by 아밀 by (Amil - a penname) who as a translated has rendered works by James Baldwin, Joyce Carol Oates, Jeanette Winterson, R. O. Kwon and Lucas Rijneveld (most notably the brillinat De avond is ongemak as 그날 저녁의 불편함) into Korean, under her real name 김지현 Kim Ji-hyun.
This is a fascinating connection of short stories with a speculative fiction and feminist slant, and a fablistic style. Interview with the author: https://honoraryreporters.korea.net/b...
The stories:
로드킬 - translated as Roadkill
Perhaps the most explicitly dystopian - set in a world where after the development of artificial wombs most women had had their utereses removed and undergone genetic modification, so that over time a new race of women incapable of giving birth. The descendants of minority that can are separated from their parents at birth and brought up in special establishments, where they are married off to selected members of society when they come of age - more akin to being farmed than anything.
정부에서는 우리를 소수인종이라고 부른다. 정확한 공식 분류는 ‘1급 보호대상 소수인종’으로, 인류 문명 전체의 공익을 위해서 반드시 보호해야 하는 인종이라는 뜻이다. 즉 머지않은 미래에 멸종해버릴 거라는 뜻이기도 하다.
우리는 진화에서 도태되었다. 개나 다람쥐나 고라니가 그랬듯, 참새나 꿩이나 까마귀가 그랬듯, 점진적이고 눈에 띄지 않는 방식으로 감소했다. 아무도 우리가 도태되어 사라질 지경에 이르리라고는 예상하지 못했다고 한다. 그러기에 우리는 너무 흔하고 너무 많았으니까. 이제 와서는 믿을 수 없는 전설처럼 들리지만, 한때 우리는 전 세계 인구 절반을 차지했었다. 그때만 해도 우리는 그저 ‘인간 여자’였고, 지구의 아무 데서나 터전을 꾸리고 살았다고 한다.
The government calls us a minority race. To put it precisely, we are designated a ‘Class 1 Protected Minority Race’, which means our race is to be protected for the good of human civilisation. It also means that, in the near future, we will go extinct.
We are being naturally selected out of the population. Just like the squirrels and water deer, just like the sparrows and pheasants, gradually and inconspicuously our numbers dwindle. They say that no one predicted we would ever get to the point of dying out. This was because we were once so commonplace, so numerous. These days it sounds like a far-fetched legend, but at one time we made up half the world’s population. Back then, we were simply ‘human women’, who were able to establish themselves and thrive anywhere on earth.
라비 - translated as Rabi
Rabi is the latest shaman of her society, and rather reluctantly so - and her story, and that of her encounter with ethnographers, is narrated by a tree whose poisonous fruits play a key role in the rituals that Rabi inherited from her grandmother.
라비는 열여섯 살 때까지 할머니 밑에서 자랐다. 그리고 대부분의 시간 동안 할머니가 죽기를 빌었다.
라비는 할머니의 양육 방침을 견딜 수 없었다. 할머니는 라비가 공용어를 쓰지 못하게 금지했다. 자신 외에는 아무도 쓰지 않는 옛말만을 가르쳤고, 라비가 이웃들에게서 주워들은 공용어를 떠듬떠듬 입에 올리는 것을 들으면 호되게 야단을 쳤다. 라비는 다른 아이들처럼 학교에 갈 수도 없었다. 라비의 교사는 할머니뿐이었고, 라비의 학교는 마을에서 가장 호젓한 곳에 자리한 방 두 칸짜리 집과 거기에 딸린 뒷마당, 그리고 그 뒤에 펼쳐진 숲과 연못뿐이었다. 그곳에서 라비는 옛날이야기와 노래, 미신, 민간요법 따위를 배웠다. 나무껍질을 얼기설기 짜서 엮은 옷을 걸치고 얼굴을 무시무시한 색깔로 칠하고 춤을 추는 법. 식물의 열매를 짓이기거나 뿌리를 태우거나 기름을 짜내는 법. 물의 열매를 짓이기거나 뿌리를 태우거나 기름을 짜내는 법. 야자의 속을 파내거나 가루를 내고 죽을 쑤는 법.
Rabi grew up under her grandmother’s thumb until she was fifteen. During most of that time, she prayed for her grandmother’s death.
Rabi could not stand her grandmother’s style of parenting. Grandmother forbade her from using the official language. She taught Rabi the old language that no one used but herself, and if she heard Rabi’s lips stammer out any words in the official language that she’d picked up from the neighbours, she gave Rabi hell. Rabi wasn’t allowed to go to school like the other children. Her only teacher was Grandmother and her school was a two-room house in the remotest part of the village, its backyard, and the forest and pond that lay beyond. It was here that Rabi learned the old stories and songs, the superstitions and folk remedies. The way to dance in clothing of woven raffia fibre with her face painted in horrible colours. The way to mash fruits and char roots and extract oils. The way to harvest the heart of a palm tree and add powdered grains to make porridge.
오세요, 알프스 대공원으로 - Welcome to the Alps Grand Park
Another dystopian piece - here air pollution in Korea has increased to levels such that the government has created and installed 58 huge air-purification towers. Life in the newly created parks in their vicinity is pleasant and the air-quality healthy, but less so for those who live a little further out, in the 'shaded zone'.
The story very effectively hands the narrative baton between the perspective of different people, some more and some less priviliged in the area, and who typically pick up the thread as they see - and then judge/envy - the previous narrator.
경숙은 남편이 지금 자신과 함께 세상을 보고 있다면 무슨 생각을 할까 궁금하다. 대기질이 삶의 질을 결정하는 중요한 척도가 되고, 정부에서 감염병 관리를 위해 인구를 분산시키려는 목적으로 저개발 지역에 우선적으로 공기청정탑을 세우고, 결국 그 지역들의 집값이 껑충 뛴 이 세상.
She wonders what her husband would think if he could see this world with her–this world in which air quality is an important measure of life quality; in which the government, aiming to redistribute the population in order to limit the spread of infectious diseases, erected air purification towers in underdeveloped parts of the country, thus causing housing costs in those areas to skyrocket.
외시경 - translated as The Door Scope
This is set in a more present-day setting, but narrated by a woman who has moved with her husband to a newly built, and still largely empty, apartment block in a new city. Her husband was originally her creative writing lecturer at university in the capital city, where he still works, and her debut story won a literary prize but since then she has suffered from depression and writer's block, and largely observes the world through the security peephole of their door. As the story progresses it becomes clear to the reader, if not entirely to her, that her husband's psychological manipulation is the source of her insecurity.
“그 집은 빈집이야. 그리고 지금은 겨울이고.”
남편은 지극히 과학적인 사실을 말하듯 선언한다. 나는 아무 말도 할 수 없다.
나는 남편에게 어쩐지 화가 난다. 하지만 내 감정을 논리적으로 설명할 수 없다.
남편이 조금 누그러진 표정으로 말한다.
“자다가 꿈꾼 거 아니야?”
“그런 것 같지는 않아요.”
“어제 약 안 먹었지?”
나는 고개를 저으려다 멈칫한다. 기억을 돌이켜본다. 어제 저녁 약을 빠뜨렸던가. 기억이 나지 않는 걸 보면 그런 듯하다.
“약통에 약이 그대로 있더라고. 그러면 안 돼. 약을 잘 먹어야지. 그래야 잠도 잘 자고.”
“……환각 증상은 아직 겪어본 적 없어요.”
“알아, 알아. 내 말은, 네가 환각을 봤다는 게 아니라, 비몽사몽 간에 착각한 것 같다는 얘기야. 꿈자리도 사납고. 새집이라 어수선하고. 그렇잖아.”
'That house is empty. And it’s the middle of winter,’ my husband declares, as if stating an obvious scientific fact.
I say nothing. Somehow, I am angry at my husband. But I cannot explain my emotions logically.
His expression softens slightly.
‘Are you sure you weren’t dreaming?’
‘It didn’t seem like it.’
‘You didn’t take your medicine yesterday, did you?’
I start to protest, and then stop. I search my memory. Did I miss a dose last night? I must have, since I can’t remember.
‘The pills in the bottle were untouched. That is not good, darling. You have to make sure to take your pills so you can sleep well.’
‘… I haven’t hallucinated anything so far.’
‘I know, I know. I’m not saying you hallucinated, I’m saying that you may have made a mistake while you were half-asleep. You might’ve had a night terror. A new house can be disorienting, can’t it?’
몽타주 - translated as Montage
The most abstract of the pieces - narrated by a woman who identifies very closely with a successful but highly secretive author.
나도 몇 번이고 다시 싸우려고 해. 내 말들이 아무리 조악할지라도, 모조리 훔쳐온 단어들뿐일지라도, 언젠가는 다 잊힌다 해도…… 단 한 순간이라도 당신을 만나 입을 맞출 수만 있다면.
그래서 지금 나는 당신을 부르고 있어. 이름 없는 당신을 부르는 것이 당신에게 다다르는 데에 아무런 도움이 되지 않을지라도. 내가 이렇게 함으로써 당신을 영영 잃어버릴지도 모른다는 것이 나를 두렵게 하지만 그럼에도. 나는 당신을 부르고 있어.
I’m going to keep fighting too. No matter how rough my words are, even if they’re completely stolen, even if they’re all forgotten someday … If I could only see you, even for just a moment, and press my lips to you.
So now I’m calling out to you. Even if calling you without a name doesn’t help me get to you at all. Even though it scares me that if I do this I might lose you forever. I’m calling out to you.
공희 - translated as The Sacrifice
This is closest to a fairy tale - although of the unsanitised Grimm-brothers-original variety - the story of a community that selects (usually acquired from outside their community) a baby girl who they then bring up in a luxurious but isolated life-style until her 16th birthday when she is sacrificed to the sea-serpent god on who they depend for the safety and bounty of their fishing. A warrior from far arrives with a mission to save her.
마을 전체가 처녀를 감시하고 있다. 처녀는 바깥세상이 어떤지 알지 못하며, 그런 세상에 대한 이야기가 들려온다 하더라도 그것은 가상이고 소문이며 옛날이야기일 뿐이다. 사실상 처녀에게 허락되는 자유는 천에 무엇을 수놓을 것인가밖에 없다. 바다와 섬 외에는 아무것도 내다보이지 않는 창문 앞, 볕이 잘 드는 자리에 처녀는 수틀을 매고 앉아서, 마을 사람들이 아낌없이 마련해주는 비단을 두고 곰곰이 상상한다. 가본 적 없는 초록빛의 초원을, 눈이 하얗게 덮인 산봉우리를, 바람에 물결치는 황금빛의 보리밭을, 도성의 으리으리한 궁궐과 정원을, 떠들썩한 시장 좌판의 사람들을, 매화와 수련과 개나리와 작약과 또 이름 모를 무수한 꽃들의 자욱한 향기를, 머나먼 이국의 코끼리와 원숭이와 살갗이 검은 여인들을, 자신을 팔아넘긴 어머니와 아버지의 얼굴을, 꿈속에서만 만날 수 있는 낭군의 얼굴을. 그리고 마음속에 떠오른 밑그림을 먹으로 옮긴 다음 그 위에 색색의 명주실로 한 땀 한 땀 수를 놓는다. 처녀의 세계는 수틀 위에서 형체와 색채를 한 겹 한 겹 덧입고 마침내 생명을 얻는다.
The whole village monitored her. She knew nothing of the world beyond; and even if some outside affair caught her ears, it was only imaginary. A rumour. An old story. In reality, the only freedom the maiden was allowed was deciding what to embroider upon her cloth. She sat where the sunlight was the brightest–in front of a window that showed her nothing but the ocean and the island–and, with her embroidery hoop and the generous amount of silk she’d been provided beside her, she let herself imagine. Green meadows she had never visited. Mountain peaks blanketed in snow. Golden fields of barley that rippled in the breeze. Grand palaces and gardens of the capital. A bustling crowd in the marketplace. The heady fragrance of plum blossoms and water lilies and forsythias and peonies and countless other flowers whose names she did not know. Elephants and monkeys and black-skinned girls from distant foreign lands. The faces of her mother and father. The face of her dear husband whom she could only see in her dreams. With an ink stick she sketched all the images in her head and then used her colourful silk threads atop them to make stitch after careful stitch. Adding layer upon layer of shape and colour, the maiden’s world came to life in her embroidery hoop.
This is a fascinating connection of short stories with a speculative fiction and feminist slant, and a fablistic style. Interview with the author: https://honoraryreporters.korea.net/b...
The stories:
로드킬 - translated as Roadkill
Perhaps the most explicitly dystopian - set in a world where after the development of artificial wombs most women had had their utereses removed and undergone genetic modification, so that over time a new race of women incapable of giving birth. The descendants of minority that can are separated from their parents at birth and brought up in special establishments, where they are married off to selected members of society when they come of age - more akin to being farmed than anything.
정부에서는 우리를 소수인종이라고 부른다. 정확한 공식 분류는 ‘1급 보호대상 소수인종’으로, 인류 문명 전체의 공익을 위해서 반드시 보호해야 하는 인종이라는 뜻이다. 즉 머지않은 미래에 멸종해버릴 거라는 뜻이기도 하다.
우리는 진화에서 도태되었다. 개나 다람쥐나 고라니가 그랬듯, 참새나 꿩이나 까마귀가 그랬듯, 점진적이고 눈에 띄지 않는 방식으로 감소했다. 아무도 우리가 도태되어 사라질 지경에 이르리라고는 예상하지 못했다고 한다. 그러기에 우리는 너무 흔하고 너무 많았으니까. 이제 와서는 믿을 수 없는 전설처럼 들리지만, 한때 우리는 전 세계 인구 절반을 차지했었다. 그때만 해도 우리는 그저 ‘인간 여자’였고, 지구의 아무 데서나 터전을 꾸리고 살았다고 한다.
The government calls us a minority race. To put it precisely, we are designated a ‘Class 1 Protected Minority Race’, which means our race is to be protected for the good of human civilisation. It also means that, in the near future, we will go extinct.
We are being naturally selected out of the population. Just like the squirrels and water deer, just like the sparrows and pheasants, gradually and inconspicuously our numbers dwindle. They say that no one predicted we would ever get to the point of dying out. This was because we were once so commonplace, so numerous. These days it sounds like a far-fetched legend, but at one time we made up half the world’s population. Back then, we were simply ‘human women’, who were able to establish themselves and thrive anywhere on earth.
라비 - translated as Rabi
Rabi is the latest shaman of her society, and rather reluctantly so - and her story, and that of her encounter with ethnographers, is narrated by a tree whose poisonous fruits play a key role in the rituals that Rabi inherited from her grandmother.
라비는 열여섯 살 때까지 할머니 밑에서 자랐다. 그리고 대부분의 시간 동안 할머니가 죽기를 빌었다.
라비는 할머니의 양육 방침을 견딜 수 없었다. 할머니는 라비가 공용어를 쓰지 못하게 금지했다. 자신 외에는 아무도 쓰지 않는 옛말만을 가르쳤고, 라비가 이웃들에게서 주워들은 공용어를 떠듬떠듬 입에 올리는 것을 들으면 호되게 야단을 쳤다. 라비는 다른 아이들처럼 학교에 갈 수도 없었다. 라비의 교사는 할머니뿐이었고, 라비의 학교는 마을에서 가장 호젓한 곳에 자리한 방 두 칸짜리 집과 거기에 딸린 뒷마당, 그리고 그 뒤에 펼쳐진 숲과 연못뿐이었다. 그곳에서 라비는 옛날이야기와 노래, 미신, 민간요법 따위를 배웠다. 나무껍질을 얼기설기 짜서 엮은 옷을 걸치고 얼굴을 무시무시한 색깔로 칠하고 춤을 추는 법. 식물의 열매를 짓이기거나 뿌리를 태우거나 기름을 짜내는 법. 물의 열매를 짓이기거나 뿌리를 태우거나 기름을 짜내는 법. 야자의 속을 파내거나 가루를 내고 죽을 쑤는 법.
Rabi grew up under her grandmother’s thumb until she was fifteen. During most of that time, she prayed for her grandmother’s death.
Rabi could not stand her grandmother’s style of parenting. Grandmother forbade her from using the official language. She taught Rabi the old language that no one used but herself, and if she heard Rabi’s lips stammer out any words in the official language that she’d picked up from the neighbours, she gave Rabi hell. Rabi wasn’t allowed to go to school like the other children. Her only teacher was Grandmother and her school was a two-room house in the remotest part of the village, its backyard, and the forest and pond that lay beyond. It was here that Rabi learned the old stories and songs, the superstitions and folk remedies. The way to dance in clothing of woven raffia fibre with her face painted in horrible colours. The way to mash fruits and char roots and extract oils. The way to harvest the heart of a palm tree and add powdered grains to make porridge.
오세요, 알프스 대공원으로 - Welcome to the Alps Grand Park
Another dystopian piece - here air pollution in Korea has increased to levels such that the government has created and installed 58 huge air-purification towers. Life in the newly created parks in their vicinity is pleasant and the air-quality healthy, but less so for those who live a little further out, in the 'shaded zone'.
The story very effectively hands the narrative baton between the perspective of different people, some more and some less priviliged in the area, and who typically pick up the thread as they see - and then judge/envy - the previous narrator.
경숙은 남편이 지금 자신과 함께 세상을 보고 있다면 무슨 생각을 할까 궁금하다. 대기질이 삶의 질을 결정하는 중요한 척도가 되고, 정부에서 감염병 관리를 위해 인구를 분산시키려는 목적으로 저개발 지역에 우선적으로 공기청정탑을 세우고, 결국 그 지역들의 집값이 껑충 뛴 이 세상.
She wonders what her husband would think if he could see this world with her–this world in which air quality is an important measure of life quality; in which the government, aiming to redistribute the population in order to limit the spread of infectious diseases, erected air purification towers in underdeveloped parts of the country, thus causing housing costs in those areas to skyrocket.
외시경 - translated as The Door Scope
This is set in a more present-day setting, but narrated by a woman who has moved with her husband to a newly built, and still largely empty, apartment block in a new city. Her husband was originally her creative writing lecturer at university in the capital city, where he still works, and her debut story won a literary prize but since then she has suffered from depression and writer's block, and largely observes the world through the security peephole of their door. As the story progresses it becomes clear to the reader, if not entirely to her, that her husband's psychological manipulation is the source of her insecurity.
“그 집은 빈집이야. 그리고 지금은 겨울이고.”
남편은 지극히 과학적인 사실을 말하듯 선언한다. 나는 아무 말도 할 수 없다.
나는 남편에게 어쩐지 화가 난다. 하지만 내 감정을 논리적으로 설명할 수 없다.
남편이 조금 누그러진 표정으로 말한다.
“자다가 꿈꾼 거 아니야?”
“그런 것 같지는 않아요.”
“어제 약 안 먹었지?”
나는 고개를 저으려다 멈칫한다. 기억을 돌이켜본다. 어제 저녁 약을 빠뜨렸던가. 기억이 나지 않는 걸 보면 그런 듯하다.
“약통에 약이 그대로 있더라고. 그러면 안 돼. 약을 잘 먹어야지. 그래야 잠도 잘 자고.”
“……환각 증상은 아직 겪어본 적 없어요.”
“알아, 알아. 내 말은, 네가 환각을 봤다는 게 아니라, 비몽사몽 간에 착각한 것 같다는 얘기야. 꿈자리도 사납고. 새집이라 어수선하고. 그렇잖아.”
'That house is empty. And it’s the middle of winter,’ my husband declares, as if stating an obvious scientific fact.
I say nothing. Somehow, I am angry at my husband. But I cannot explain my emotions logically.
His expression softens slightly.
‘Are you sure you weren’t dreaming?’
‘It didn’t seem like it.’
‘You didn’t take your medicine yesterday, did you?’
I start to protest, and then stop. I search my memory. Did I miss a dose last night? I must have, since I can’t remember.
‘The pills in the bottle were untouched. That is not good, darling. You have to make sure to take your pills so you can sleep well.’
‘… I haven’t hallucinated anything so far.’
‘I know, I know. I’m not saying you hallucinated, I’m saying that you may have made a mistake while you were half-asleep. You might’ve had a night terror. A new house can be disorienting, can’t it?’
몽타주 - translated as Montage
The most abstract of the pieces - narrated by a woman who identifies very closely with a successful but highly secretive author.
나도 몇 번이고 다시 싸우려고 해. 내 말들이 아무리 조악할지라도, 모조리 훔쳐온 단어들뿐일지라도, 언젠가는 다 잊힌다 해도…… 단 한 순간이라도 당신을 만나 입을 맞출 수만 있다면.
그래서 지금 나는 당신을 부르고 있어. 이름 없는 당신을 부르는 것이 당신에게 다다르는 데에 아무런 도움이 되지 않을지라도. 내가 이렇게 함으로써 당신을 영영 잃어버릴지도 모른다는 것이 나를 두렵게 하지만 그럼에도. 나는 당신을 부르고 있어.
I’m going to keep fighting too. No matter how rough my words are, even if they’re completely stolen, even if they’re all forgotten someday … If I could only see you, even for just a moment, and press my lips to you.
So now I’m calling out to you. Even if calling you without a name doesn’t help me get to you at all. Even though it scares me that if I do this I might lose you forever. I’m calling out to you.
공희 - translated as The Sacrifice
This is closest to a fairy tale - although of the unsanitised Grimm-brothers-original variety - the story of a community that selects (usually acquired from outside their community) a baby girl who they then bring up in a luxurious but isolated life-style until her 16th birthday when she is sacrificed to the sea-serpent god on who they depend for the safety and bounty of their fishing. A warrior from far arrives with a mission to save her.
마을 전체가 처녀를 감시하고 있다. 처녀는 바깥세상이 어떤지 알지 못하며, 그런 세상에 대한 이야기가 들려온다 하더라도 그것은 가상이고 소문이며 옛날이야기일 뿐이다. 사실상 처녀에게 허락되는 자유는 천에 무엇을 수놓을 것인가밖에 없다. 바다와 섬 외에는 아무것도 내다보이지 않는 창문 앞, 볕이 잘 드는 자리에 처녀는 수틀을 매고 앉아서, 마을 사람들이 아낌없이 마련해주는 비단을 두고 곰곰이 상상한다. 가본 적 없는 초록빛의 초원을, 눈이 하얗게 덮인 산봉우리를, 바람에 물결치는 황금빛의 보리밭을, 도성의 으리으리한 궁궐과 정원을, 떠들썩한 시장 좌판의 사람들을, 매화와 수련과 개나리와 작약과 또 이름 모를 무수한 꽃들의 자욱한 향기를, 머나먼 이국의 코끼리와 원숭이와 살갗이 검은 여인들을, 자신을 팔아넘긴 어머니와 아버지의 얼굴을, 꿈속에서만 만날 수 있는 낭군의 얼굴을. 그리고 마음속에 떠오른 밑그림을 먹으로 옮긴 다음 그 위에 색색의 명주실로 한 땀 한 땀 수를 놓는다. 처녀의 세계는 수틀 위에서 형체와 색채를 한 겹 한 겹 덧입고 마침내 생명을 얻는다.
The whole village monitored her. She knew nothing of the world beyond; and even if some outside affair caught her ears, it was only imaginary. A rumour. An old story. In reality, the only freedom the maiden was allowed was deciding what to embroider upon her cloth. She sat where the sunlight was the brightest–in front of a window that showed her nothing but the ocean and the island–and, with her embroidery hoop and the generous amount of silk she’d been provided beside her, she let herself imagine. Green meadows she had never visited. Mountain peaks blanketed in snow. Golden fields of barley that rippled in the breeze. Grand palaces and gardens of the capital. A bustling crowd in the marketplace. The heady fragrance of plum blossoms and water lilies and forsythias and peonies and countless other flowers whose names she did not know. Elephants and monkeys and black-skinned girls from distant foreign lands. The faces of her mother and father. The face of her dear husband whom she could only see in her dreams. With an ink stick she sketched all the images in her head and then used her colourful silk threads atop them to make stitch after careful stitch. Adding layer upon layer of shape and colour, the maiden’s world came to life in her embroidery hoop.
December 1, 2025
Die erste von den sechs Kurzgeschichten war noch ganz spannend, dann es leider Stück für Stück abgebaut. Ich hatte das Gefühl, dass die Autorin teilweise mehr erzählen wollte als Platz in den Kurzgeschichten war.
October 24, 2025
One of the best short story collections I’ve read this year. Deeply poetic and fearless, this deserves to be next to the works of Sayaka Murata and Bora Chung. If you love those two authors, please read Amil’s stories. I am so happy that I found this copy in my local bookstore, my money well spent and my soul transcended. My individual ratings are as follows, but as a whole, this is a 5 star book.
Roadkill – 5/5 reminiscent of The grace year and Only ever yours with a dark sci-fi elements
Rabi – 4/5 the ending of this story was heartbreaking and magical, also the narrator is a plant
Welcome to the Alps Grand Park – 4/5 this holds firm ground about ecological issues and future developments
The door scope - 6/5 my favorite story in here, obsessive, unhinged and delusional, trigger warning for SA and grooming
Montage – 3/5 I confess I didn’t get this one, it needs multiple re-reads, but it was the type of weird I appreciate, but not always love
The sacrifice 4.5/5 this read like a fairy tale, an urban legend and it was tragic and beautiful
Roadkill – 5/5 reminiscent of The grace year and Only ever yours with a dark sci-fi elements
Rabi – 4/5 the ending of this story was heartbreaking and magical, also the narrator is a plant
Welcome to the Alps Grand Park – 4/5 this holds firm ground about ecological issues and future developments
The door scope - 6/5 my favorite story in here, obsessive, unhinged and delusional, trigger warning for SA and grooming
Montage – 3/5 I confess I didn’t get this one, it needs multiple re-reads, but it was the type of weird I appreciate, but not always love
The sacrifice 4.5/5 this read like a fairy tale, an urban legend and it was tragic and beautiful
October 22, 2025
idk if i fully understand the conducting thread of these stories - fate? misogyny?
October 27, 2025
Some shorts were great some weren’t so great
November 30, 2025
dark and unsettling. lost a bit of momentum towards the end but overall good
August 6, 2025
one of the most beautiful anthologies I have ever had the pleasure to read, and will haunt my thoughts for weeks to come
September 2, 2025
“We’ve always been rare and mysterious creatures. We’d been taught this ever since we were children.”
This short story collection got me from the description - feminist science fiction and fantasy! I loved everything about Roadkill - the stories, the feminist themes, rethinking the role of women in society, women who don’t conform and rebel, and the speculative fiction (especially in the titular story, 'Roadkill').
Written by Amil (the pen name of Kim Ji-hyun, a Korean translator of authors such as James Baldwin and Jeanette Winterson), Roadkill (translated by Archana Madhavan) explores womanhood and identity in worlds where women must fight for survival, are a rare occurrence, or are sacrificed to serpent monsters. The stories are rooted in contemporary Korean culture, where feminist literature is gaining traction. It makes sense, considering that S. Korea has the lowest birthrate in the world (.75, not even one child per woman), which is due mainly to gender inequality, with women opting out of marriage or dating altogether.
So yes, S. Korean feminist fiction will be unhinged. As promised, as delivered. The collection contains six stories, each set in a different world, but showcasing women trapped, either by society, used as a bargaining chip for their survival, by tradition, forced into loveless marriages and homesteading while craving freedom, or by circumstances, being prisoners for “their protection”, as they are the last fertile women in the world and they become rare commodities (and the target of abuse).
Every story is great, but I loved Roadkill the most, as it’s set in a dystopian future, and I am a sucker for feminist dystopias. The story reminded me a little of Augustina Bazzterica’s The Unworthy, which shares a similar theme: women are kept trapped in an institution for their protection, as the outside world is out to get them. These women are the last of their kind: women able to conceive and carry children. With the discovery of the artificial womb, many women gave up having children and altered their bodies so they could never conceive again. They became free of societal expectations to live the life they desired. The mothers of these women, though, were living in isolated communities, so their daughters were brought to a facility to be raised for one purpose only: to get married and have children (if girls, they will be brought to this facility). They are unique, the last carriers of their genes, but also prisoners. Two young women, right before their interviews with prospective husbands, decide to escape. But they know nothing of the world outside.
Rabi is the story of the last woman shaman of a tribe that clashes with modernity. Rabi was raised by her abusive grandmother and kept away from touching modernity: learning the old tribal language only, not having access to any other form of education but the traditional shaman education her grandmother gave her, and getting immersed in nature and its secrets. However, the village doesn’t use the services of the old shaman, as there’s a hospital in a town close by, so Rabi grows up alone, abandoned, and unloved. When her grandmother dies in an accident, Rabi becomes a shaman, but she doesn’t know what to do with it, and, to live, ends up doing menial jobs for the tribe. That’s until a team of researchers reaches the tribe, and suddenly, Rabi’s knowledge is the most valuable thing they can offer. But Rabi is pragmatic by now, and all she wants is money to get out. For this, she needs to make up rituals, stories, and traditions that are worth the pay she asks.
Welcome to the Alps Grand Park, which takes us to a future where pollution is so harmful that South Korea needs to build giant air purifiers in parts of the country that were underpopulated. This way, they can reduce overpopulation in the main cities and develop these areas more effectively. However, the air purifiers create a new form of discrimination: the ones who have access to clean air (closer to the purifiers) and the ones who do not. The privilege becomes clean air, and the poor suffer from diseases caused by pollution (one of which is the Gangshi disease, which makes people look like zombies). A story about how easy it is for people to move from poor to privileged and discriminate and isolate others who don’t have access to the same resources they do.
The Door Scope is a horror story that follows a woman who moves into a luxurious apartment in a secluded area. She wrote a debut novel that made her famous but also brought her public shame, as it shone a spotlight on her promiscuous life. She stopped writing and married her professor, who actively pursued her. In an abusive marriage, now she is heavily medicated, suffering from depression, and moving to an isolated apartment away from the city. The lines between reality and fantasy blur when she sees a woman through the door scope who wears a dress that is way too familiar to her. The woman entered the apartment opposite and was only wearing a silk dress in the middle of winter. She decides to stop taking her pills, and the reality of her marriage and abuse slowly starts to unfurl…
Montage was a weird one, extremely abstract. A woman writes an intimate letter to a famous author, sharing secrets that only they would know. She addresses the scenes of abuse from the authors’ books, which are closely related to her experience. It turns into something else by the end - my guess would be a spoiler, so I will let you discover this one. And tell me what you found; I am curious to see if I guessed right. (I’ve read the ending many times, but I am still not sure I got it.)
The Sacrifice is a fantasy piece: a coastal village lives from the bountiful sea, at the mercy of a mighty sea serpent, which makes sure that they have plenty of fish and abundance. There’s a catch, though: each year, they have to sacrifice a 16-year-old virgin to the sea serpent. They buy the girls from other villages, and they raise them in silence and complete purity, with only one purpose: to be sacrificed. One of the girls becomes extremely skilled at embroidery, and the rumour of her talent travels far and wide. A courageous knight decides to save the maiden, and so he does. But, he will need to pay a price that he did not expect.
Finally, I wholeheartedly recommend this (it earned 5/5 stars for me), especially if you are into feminist speculative fiction, dystopia, ecofiction, science fiction, and fantasy.
This short story collection got me from the description - feminist science fiction and fantasy! I loved everything about Roadkill - the stories, the feminist themes, rethinking the role of women in society, women who don’t conform and rebel, and the speculative fiction (especially in the titular story, 'Roadkill').
Written by Amil (the pen name of Kim Ji-hyun, a Korean translator of authors such as James Baldwin and Jeanette Winterson), Roadkill (translated by Archana Madhavan) explores womanhood and identity in worlds where women must fight for survival, are a rare occurrence, or are sacrificed to serpent monsters. The stories are rooted in contemporary Korean culture, where feminist literature is gaining traction. It makes sense, considering that S. Korea has the lowest birthrate in the world (.75, not even one child per woman), which is due mainly to gender inequality, with women opting out of marriage or dating altogether.
So yes, S. Korean feminist fiction will be unhinged. As promised, as delivered. The collection contains six stories, each set in a different world, but showcasing women trapped, either by society, used as a bargaining chip for their survival, by tradition, forced into loveless marriages and homesteading while craving freedom, or by circumstances, being prisoners for “their protection”, as they are the last fertile women in the world and they become rare commodities (and the target of abuse).
Every story is great, but I loved Roadkill the most, as it’s set in a dystopian future, and I am a sucker for feminist dystopias. The story reminded me a little of Augustina Bazzterica’s The Unworthy, which shares a similar theme: women are kept trapped in an institution for their protection, as the outside world is out to get them. These women are the last of their kind: women able to conceive and carry children. With the discovery of the artificial womb, many women gave up having children and altered their bodies so they could never conceive again. They became free of societal expectations to live the life they desired. The mothers of these women, though, were living in isolated communities, so their daughters were brought to a facility to be raised for one purpose only: to get married and have children (if girls, they will be brought to this facility). They are unique, the last carriers of their genes, but also prisoners. Two young women, right before their interviews with prospective husbands, decide to escape. But they know nothing of the world outside.
Rabi is the story of the last woman shaman of a tribe that clashes with modernity. Rabi was raised by her abusive grandmother and kept away from touching modernity: learning the old tribal language only, not having access to any other form of education but the traditional shaman education her grandmother gave her, and getting immersed in nature and its secrets. However, the village doesn’t use the services of the old shaman, as there’s a hospital in a town close by, so Rabi grows up alone, abandoned, and unloved. When her grandmother dies in an accident, Rabi becomes a shaman, but she doesn’t know what to do with it, and, to live, ends up doing menial jobs for the tribe. That’s until a team of researchers reaches the tribe, and suddenly, Rabi’s knowledge is the most valuable thing they can offer. But Rabi is pragmatic by now, and all she wants is money to get out. For this, she needs to make up rituals, stories, and traditions that are worth the pay she asks.
Welcome to the Alps Grand Park, which takes us to a future where pollution is so harmful that South Korea needs to build giant air purifiers in parts of the country that were underpopulated. This way, they can reduce overpopulation in the main cities and develop these areas more effectively. However, the air purifiers create a new form of discrimination: the ones who have access to clean air (closer to the purifiers) and the ones who do not. The privilege becomes clean air, and the poor suffer from diseases caused by pollution (one of which is the Gangshi disease, which makes people look like zombies). A story about how easy it is for people to move from poor to privileged and discriminate and isolate others who don’t have access to the same resources they do.
The Door Scope is a horror story that follows a woman who moves into a luxurious apartment in a secluded area. She wrote a debut novel that made her famous but also brought her public shame, as it shone a spotlight on her promiscuous life. She stopped writing and married her professor, who actively pursued her. In an abusive marriage, now she is heavily medicated, suffering from depression, and moving to an isolated apartment away from the city. The lines between reality and fantasy blur when she sees a woman through the door scope who wears a dress that is way too familiar to her. The woman entered the apartment opposite and was only wearing a silk dress in the middle of winter. She decides to stop taking her pills, and the reality of her marriage and abuse slowly starts to unfurl…
Montage was a weird one, extremely abstract. A woman writes an intimate letter to a famous author, sharing secrets that only they would know. She addresses the scenes of abuse from the authors’ books, which are closely related to her experience. It turns into something else by the end - my guess would be a spoiler, so I will let you discover this one. And tell me what you found; I am curious to see if I guessed right. (I’ve read the ending many times, but I am still not sure I got it.)
The Sacrifice is a fantasy piece: a coastal village lives from the bountiful sea, at the mercy of a mighty sea serpent, which makes sure that they have plenty of fish and abundance. There’s a catch, though: each year, they have to sacrifice a 16-year-old virgin to the sea serpent. They buy the girls from other villages, and they raise them in silence and complete purity, with only one purpose: to be sacrificed. One of the girls becomes extremely skilled at embroidery, and the rumour of her talent travels far and wide. A courageous knight decides to save the maiden, and so he does. But, he will need to pay a price that he did not expect.
Finally, I wholeheartedly recommend this (it earned 5/5 stars for me), especially if you are into feminist speculative fiction, dystopia, ecofiction, science fiction, and fantasy.
October 22, 2025
1) Roadkill - 2 - The setup felt at once too familiar (wonder why that is though - because all that comes to mind is the handmaids tale and I read that many years ago.) and not fully fleshed out. I would place this story at the end, not the beginning.
I really hope all the stories in this collection don't end like this.
2) Rabi - 4 - Phew. anything could happen and Fuck Anthropologists. I really hoped the plant would play a larger role tho
3) Welcome to Alps Grand Park -3 - When a described dystopia hits too close to home.
4) The Door Scope -5- Love. love. Yes! do I just like violence?
5) The Sacrifice - 1 - uff I hate the many pages we spent on the hero and his rescue. Stunning embroidery!
It was a loop but was it just a hole?
6) Montage - 2 - just pure vibes.
I really hope all the stories in this collection don't end like this.
2) Rabi - 4 - Phew. anything could happen and Fuck Anthropologists. I really hoped the plant would play a larger role tho
3) Welcome to Alps Grand Park -3 - When a described dystopia hits too close to home.
4) The Door Scope -5- Love. love. Yes! do I just like violence?
5) The Sacrifice - 1 - uff I hate the many pages we spent on the hero and his rescue. Stunning embroidery!
It was a loop but was it just a hole?
6) Montage - 2 - just pure vibes.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
October 5, 2025
maybe 3,5?
the style of writing, the characters, even the whole storylines felt very naive. like caricatures of certain tropes that arguably don’t have a prominent existence in fiction (so for that kudos). the stories had many plot holes. in many ways the author just took observations and just made them literal or exaggerated them. so tldr, felt like the whole book was in the right direction and carried the potential (and i mean the potential, because the stories are in no way innovative) for authentic creativity but it lacks nuance and depth, which i hope will develop with time.
the style of writing, the characters, even the whole storylines felt very naive. like caricatures of certain tropes that arguably don’t have a prominent existence in fiction (so for that kudos). the stories had many plot holes. in many ways the author just took observations and just made them literal or exaggerated them. so tldr, felt like the whole book was in the right direction and carried the potential (and i mean the potential, because the stories are in no way innovative) for authentic creativity but it lacks nuance and depth, which i hope will develop with time.
October 11, 2025
This is a collection of six short stories translated from Korean that has a surprising range. Not one story is like the others but all of them say something about exploitation of women and/or class inequality. I don't know why there isn't more hype about this book.
'Rabi' tells of a shaman from a tribe that has started to become tainted by the outside world, losing their respect for older forms of authority. Some scientists arrive, hoping to mine indigenous knowledge for research (and personal glory, of course) but Rabi actually does not know any secrets, so she makes it all up and trades her stories for money to start anew in the city.
In a similar vein, 'The Sacrifice' (my favourite!) starts out in the style of a old folktale about village that sacrifices a maiden they bought and raised in sixteen-year cycles to a dragon so they can continue to enjoy its protection and also profit from the maiden's creative output. A warrior rescues her for his own ego but then becomes unable to see her as a person and treats her no better than the villagers did.
'The Door Scope' (my 2nd favourite) features a woman whose writing dreams are curbed by her much older husband (and ex-professor...) who insists that she is too unwell to produce anything. He keeps her medicated and dictates what she wears. He is 100% trying to control and gaslight her and he married her only because he believes he can carry out his rape fantasies on her under the guise of her own deviance and the acceptable trappings of marriage. It reminded me of 'The Yellow Wallpaper' by Gilman and 'Soup of the Day' by David Leo.
'Roadkill' is set in the future when technology is so advanced that babies can be made artificially, so most women removed their reproductive organs to improve their quality of life. Some men created a facility to rear and basically sell girls who can still reproduce the 'natural' way when they turn sixteen. As expected, these girls are also raised to have conservative values like living to please their future husbands.
'Welcome to the Alps Grand Park' shows how people are ultimately selfish and unable to see their good fortune as the result of luck or generational wealth, not so much actual deservedness. In a futuristic Korea where giant air purifying towers are built, only the upper echelons of society can afford to stay there and they want to make it a gated residence to keep out the riffraff. Those who stay in the shade, however, are doomed to inhaling the filtered fine dust and developing horrific health problems.
'Montage' is the most abstract and I read it as a fan letter written to an author who has depicted 'taboo' topics like rape, but I'm not quite sure what to make of it. Would love to hear others' interpretations!
'Rabi' tells of a shaman from a tribe that has started to become tainted by the outside world, losing their respect for older forms of authority. Some scientists arrive, hoping to mine indigenous knowledge for research (and personal glory, of course) but Rabi actually does not know any secrets, so she makes it all up and trades her stories for money to start anew in the city.
In a similar vein, 'The Sacrifice' (my favourite!) starts out in the style of a old folktale about village that sacrifices a maiden they bought and raised in sixteen-year cycles to a dragon so they can continue to enjoy its protection and also profit from the maiden's creative output. A warrior rescues her for his own ego but then becomes unable to see her as a person and treats her no better than the villagers did.
'The Door Scope' (my 2nd favourite) features a woman whose writing dreams are curbed by her much older husband (and ex-professor...) who insists that she is too unwell to produce anything. He keeps her medicated and dictates what she wears. He is 100% trying to control and gaslight her and he married her only because he believes he can carry out his rape fantasies on her under the guise of her own deviance and the acceptable trappings of marriage. It reminded me of 'The Yellow Wallpaper' by Gilman and 'Soup of the Day' by David Leo.
'Roadkill' is set in the future when technology is so advanced that babies can be made artificially, so most women removed their reproductive organs to improve their quality of life. Some men created a facility to rear and basically sell girls who can still reproduce the 'natural' way when they turn sixteen. As expected, these girls are also raised to have conservative values like living to please their future husbands.
'Welcome to the Alps Grand Park' shows how people are ultimately selfish and unable to see their good fortune as the result of luck or generational wealth, not so much actual deservedness. In a futuristic Korea where giant air purifying towers are built, only the upper echelons of society can afford to stay there and they want to make it a gated residence to keep out the riffraff. Those who stay in the shade, however, are doomed to inhaling the filtered fine dust and developing horrific health problems.
'Montage' is the most abstract and I read it as a fan letter written to an author who has depicted 'taboo' topics like rape, but I'm not quite sure what to make of it. Would love to hear others' interpretations!
October 26, 2025
A collection of six stories in a mixture of scifi and dystopia backdrops with fantasy, myth and feminist driven premises. Having a blend of contemporary tone in an emotional ‘damsel in distress’ trope, bit unsettling for its alienation, identity and gender oppression views but fairly unique and appealing throughout following its vivid worldbuilding and female narrators in their haunted, perceptive characterization.
Loved both Roadkill and The Door Scope the most for its intriguing narrator’s POVs who trapped by circumstances and lured me into their tales of surviving and escaping. Roadkill was set in a near-future dystopia where women are classed as endangered minority; I followed 2 young friends in their quest to escape a reproductive facility disguised as shelter that brainwashed them with mental abuse and estrangement that they are being protected for the good of human civilisation. The Door Scope was bit wild and darker to me as it centered around a couple with the wife being kept confined in a house, was gaslighted to not having a talent (she’s a writer) and sexually abused by the husband until it gets explicitly psychological and later drowning the premise into a disquieting thriller. I truly loved the ending for this story!
Averagely enjoyed the rest as much especially The Sacrifice that was crafted in a heroism fantasy with a dramatic folkloric backdrop, Welcome To The Alps Grand Park that was set in a stratified world where some people live under the dominance of massive air-purifier towers and others who are living under the shade as well Rabi that revolved around a tale of the last female shaman of an indigenous tribe; quite melancholic for its cultural perspective yet interesting much for how it has a poisonous tree as one of its characters.
Not a happy ending tales overall but such an engaging and outstanding collection for the featured theme.
Thank you Pansing Distribution for the gifted review copy!
Loved both Roadkill and The Door Scope the most for its intriguing narrator’s POVs who trapped by circumstances and lured me into their tales of surviving and escaping. Roadkill was set in a near-future dystopia where women are classed as endangered minority; I followed 2 young friends in their quest to escape a reproductive facility disguised as shelter that brainwashed them with mental abuse and estrangement that they are being protected for the good of human civilisation. The Door Scope was bit wild and darker to me as it centered around a couple with the wife being kept confined in a house, was gaslighted to not having a talent (she’s a writer) and sexually abused by the husband until it gets explicitly psychological and later drowning the premise into a disquieting thriller. I truly loved the ending for this story!
Averagely enjoyed the rest as much especially The Sacrifice that was crafted in a heroism fantasy with a dramatic folkloric backdrop, Welcome To The Alps Grand Park that was set in a stratified world where some people live under the dominance of massive air-purifier towers and others who are living under the shade as well Rabi that revolved around a tale of the last female shaman of an indigenous tribe; quite melancholic for its cultural perspective yet interesting much for how it has a poisonous tree as one of its characters.
Not a happy ending tales overall but such an engaging and outstanding collection for the featured theme.
Thank you Pansing Distribution for the gifted review copy!
December 4, 2025
4☆
Ngl, I was intrigued when I saw the cover. Also, the premise doesn't say much about the book except the first story. Only after I finished the first story, I realised it was a collection of short stories. (I went in blind and refused to read any reviews/summaries prior)
I kept trying to figure out what is the common theme across the stories, other than the fact that it is female-oriented. Each story narrates how a female navigates around their situation, despite being the "weaker" one.
I enjoyed "The Door Scope" most as it felt like a prequel to the usual thrillers I'm familiar with. "Rabi" was a unique story about an interesting living thing, which also has said thing narrating from its POV. "The Sacrifice" reminded me a lot about the Korean folktales I have read before; kinda making me want to read more into the sub-genre again. I don't really have much say about the other 3 stories, other than I am now curious how "Montage" is in the original Korean language.
This isn't my usual type of book but I'm glad I picked this up during my library run.
Ngl, I was intrigued when I saw the cover. Also, the premise doesn't say much about the book except the first story. Only after I finished the first story, I realised it was a collection of short stories. (I went in blind and refused to read any reviews/summaries prior)
I kept trying to figure out what is the common theme across the stories, other than the fact that it is female-oriented. Each story narrates how a female navigates around their situation, despite being the "weaker" one.
I enjoyed "The Door Scope" most as it felt like a prequel to the usual thrillers I'm familiar with. "Rabi" was a unique story about an interesting living thing, which also has said thing narrating from its POV. "The Sacrifice" reminded me a lot about the Korean folktales I have read before; kinda making me want to read more into the sub-genre again. I don't really have much say about the other 3 stories, other than I am now curious how "Montage" is in the original Korean language.
This isn't my usual type of book but I'm glad I picked this up during my library run.
September 12, 2025
1.5 stars
An eclectic mix of intriguing stories but I couldn’t decipher the point of them
An eclectic mix of intriguing stories but I couldn’t decipher the point of them
December 15, 2025
Some stories were amazing, some where just meh, most were predictable. Would not really recommend, tehre are better stories out there.
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