Status Updates From Oxford Soju Club

“The door opens. It is not the bearded American. Instead it is the employee from the Soju Club. Deoksu with his long hair tied in a neat ponytail.”

I was NOT expecting Deoksu to have ties Yohan AT ALL. Not that it was an unwelcome surprise– in fact, I am actually really relieved that he showed up and that there is more depth to his character than just an employee at the Soju Club. main character intro type sh.

“…if Jihoon learned anything with Deoksu, it’s that it helps to be with someone who speaks the language. It’s just easier, more comforting, even. There’s just a way that a sentence strung together in Korean makes him feel that he never gets from English. That is how Jihoon knows he is Korean, no matter how much he tried to leave it all behind.”

Ok I was wrong. Now I’m even less sure what the plot is supposed to be.

I'm warming up now that the the plot is rolling faster. The extremely flat direct present tense style still feels way too detached and clinical. And now we shall examine the death of his mother. She made him mackerel for his lunch the day she died. Now we shall examine her rocky relationship with her parents. Aha look. There is a conflict. .... I am leaning in on the plot though. I am invested in figuring out Jihoon.

Ok I think I have the Jihoon twist figured out. Let's find out if I've got it.

How is the shoot out boring? I'm not particularly interested in any of the characters, I don't know where the plot is going. Obviously there is a conflict with the collapsing spy ring but like k... I guess...... that's happening. Oh and Jihoon is still here. I'm holding out just to see the twist of who the fuck Jihoon is and why he's here. Why are you here Jihoon? Why do you get as much page space as the other two?

It’s short so I’m pushing through but for a book about spies it is so slow. I would have expected it to have more tension. It’s also an extremely direct writing style so it reads fast but it’s also easy for me to get distracted because there’s so little voice.

bro moving to oxford partly cuz he likes the golden compass was an unexpected but cute detail haha

why hire someone to narrate a book with korean names and words if they cant pronounce it for shit? like this dude isnt even americanizing them. i dont want him to go crazy with an accurate pronunciation, but this dude isn’t saying a single vowel correctly

Eating this up