Thursday, September 24, 2020

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Vicious Spirits by Kat Cho

Vicious Spirits is the second part of a YA Fantasy duology by Kat Cho, with the first half being her 2019 novel Wicked Fox  (which I reviewed here).  It's not just a YA fantasy series, but a pair of books that basically feel like the idea of a teenage kdrama, only with Korean fantasy creatures existing in secret alongside the human teens in Seoul.  Wicked Fox dealt with a romantic coupling of Jihoon, a human teen living with his grandmother, and Miyoung a teenage Gumiho girl who would rather not drain human spirits as she needs in order to survive.  It was a twisty tale, with some pretty ridiculous but strong plot twists along the way, and it featured a few interesting side characters...whom the book wasn't quite able to feature as much as I wanted.

Vicious Spirits shifts the focus really to those side characters, particularly Jihoon's best friend Lee Somin and the Dobbaeki Junu.  The story still deals in good part with our original duo, but this is mostly a romance story between the two, with all the twists you'd expect and more - Junu's supernatural origins being a particular barrier.  It's very well done, if very predictable at times (far more than the first book), and it's far from subtle but hey, that's the style you should be expecting here.  And again, it's very fun and enjoyable as a result, so yeah still very much recommended.


--------------------------------------------------Plot Summary----------------------------------------------------
Lee Somin has always felt the need to take care of everyone in her life - from her mother to her closest friends, like Jihoon.  And Jihoon, and his girlfriend - the gumiho (or ex-gumiho, it's not clear to anyone) Miyoung - are understandably a bit of a mess right now: Jihoon having lost his halmeoni (grandma) and Miyoung having lost her mother in the final confrontation with the shaman.  It doesn't help that Jihoon's landlord is now evicting him, either.  Somin still isn't used to the supernatural stuff being real, but she is used to trying to help parent her friends through their lives...even at the cost of her own dreams.

But what Somin is definitely not used to is Junu, the Dobbaeki (Goblin) whose actions unintentionally lead to Miyoung's tragedy.  Junu's outrageous confidence, good looks, and refusal to supposedly care about anything just infuriate Somin....and he won't quite go away for some reason.  And yet...infuriate is not quite the right word, for Somin can't help but feel there's more to the dobbaeki, even if she can't quite admit that.

Junu meanwhile certainly never had any intentions on growing attached to any humans, after the tragedy that led to the start of his life as a Dobbaeki.  But his guilt over what happened to Miyoung has made it impossible for him to leave them all alone....and Somin's outrage over him draws him like a lamp for some reason.  Of course nothing could come of their interactions Junu thinks, especially with his own origins.

But when Junu receives an otherworldly visitor warning of a breach of the barrier between the spirit and human world, a breach definitely connected to Miyoung, he finds that the only solution any of them can think of would require him to reconnect with those long forgotten origins.  And as he attempts to find a way to fix it all, and to repay his debt, Junu and Somin find themselves drawn together more than they could possibly imagine....if the two don't decide to kill each other in frustration first....
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Like Wicked Fox, Vicious Spirits jumps around between a few point of view characters from chapter to chapter - in this case Junu, Somin and Miyoung (returning from book 1), with interludes telling stories about a supernatural creature - in this book, the Dobbaeki rather than Wicked Fox's Gumiho.  The book is a lot more upfront in these interludes and the prologue in when the dobbaeki being talked about is in fact Junu rather than just general dobbaeki tales for flavor.  There's little mystery here about the basics of what happened in Junu's past for the reader, even as the other characters discover it over the duration of the story, unlike in Wicked Fox where the origins of everything were a bit more of a surprise.

The same is true of the relationships really here in this story, which are a lot more up front and blatant.  That main relationship in this story is that of Junu and Somin - Miyoung and Jihoon have more developing to do as Miyoung essentially has to learn to move forward and to truly embrace the very real feelings she has for Jihoon, and that arc of this story works fairly well, but this book really centers around Somin and Junu.  Like the prior protagonists, the two are similar in how they repress openly showing their own internal feelings with others, but in very different ways.  For Somin, that comes from seeing her friends and mother fall apart at the same time at a young age, which she reacted to by deciding to repress her own desires in favor of putting everyone else first, acting like the parent in these relationships.  For Junu, it comes with trying to forget the past and repressing any inkling of attachment to anyone but himself, because the one time as a young man he thought he felt love he was horrifically punished for it.

Their repressions are obvious only to the other, and the two's relationship - at first angry and confrontational and then more tender, as Somin's daring attempt at a kiss turns into more - really becomes the pair trying to convince the other to acknowledge their own repression....and each of them falling more and more for the other as they get frustrated in the process.  Of course, as you might imagine, the two would never admit that, with the story taking them closer and then farther on a number of occasions, but really it all works.  It's not a steamy romance - the most we see on page is a bit of kissing, but it's one that's really well done.

And it's a romance that centers a plot that again is fairly twisty and turny, although in ways that are far more predictable than the last novel (you'll see certain plot elements coming a mile away, and one twist in particular you will know has occurred well before the characters realize it).  Our exploration of the supernatural here expands as the plot here includes creatures from Korean mythology like jeoseung saja (Korean reapers) and sansin (mountain gods), who play major roles in the story.  In addition to being fairly predictable at times, the characters in this novel are sometimes obnoxiously blunt about their feelings, which perhaps feels a bit unrealistic....but in the context of this novel it works.  It all adds up to an ending which satisfyingly wraps up this duology, and makes it well worth your time.

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