Horn Book Review

Thirteen-year-old Min is feisty and clever, and she has a powerful secret: shes a gumiho, a fox spirit disguised as a human. Min can shape-shift and use Charm (fox magic) to alter others perceptions and emotions. She enthusiastically wields these powers when she ditches her dismal life on the barren planet Jinju in order to track down her brother Jun, a Thousand Worlds Space Forces cadet whos gone AWOL. Mins epic adventure leads to run-ins with spaceport security guards, gamblers, and ghosts. She impersonates a dead cadet on a starship battle cruiser and encounters the legendary Dragon Pearl, a mystical orb that creates life. Lee has a knack for world-building. His richly detailed, cohesive, original vision is a lively mash-up of outer-space sci-fi and Korean culture and folklore: starships have gi, an energy flow; pirates fly in groups of four because its a number that signifies death; characters, both supernatural and human, eat gimchi and play the board game baduk; Min befriends a dragon cadet who can summon the weather?sometimes inadvertentlyand a dokkaebi (Korean goblin) who carries a magical spork. The dokkaebi is also a nonbinary character, whos referred to with gender-?neutral pronounsa small detail thats woven in matter-of-factly and just as smoothly as all the other strands in this engaging space opera. tanya d. auger January/February 2019 p 96(c) Copyright 2021. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.