PositiveLos Angeles Review of Books\"... intriguing and playfully fun ... If all of the allegorical and philosophical stuff makes the proceedings sound like a drag, don’t worry, The Plotters, translated from the Korean by Sora Kim-Russell, is a lot of fun ... The trope of training and conditioning passages and montages in books and films about specialized danger-man vocations is expected, but sidestepped and subverted here by presenting a skilled professional of high intelligence fully developed on page one whose routine is explored, but only on the back end ... The Plotters walks in the traditions of the noble detective and the samurai while spinning some new chewy bits probably best not mimicked. By the end, heroism rises out of the carnage to trump the nihilistic capitalism in a rousing climax.\
You-Jeong Jeong, Translated by Chi-Young Kim
PositiveLos Angeles Review of BooksIt is in the book’s second half that the story is most engaging. The first half’s concerns are explored mostly through interior monologue consisting of thoughts most readers of books or watchers of films could fill in on their own ... We’ve read these books and seen these films and so we spend much of the first half of the story a step or two ahead of his narration wishing he would catch up instead of mulling over his options in a situation familiar to audiences ... Once Yu-jin discovers and begins to read his mother’s journal and offers the reader his own take on each chapter of the story that she tells, stroke by (alternately conflicting and complementary) stroke a more complete picture is formed ... even after crucial bits of memory are recovered the mystery remains until the resolution. And that resolution is satisfyingly chilling and, depending on the reader, thrilling.
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay[/caption]
