Book Title: Luminous
Author: Silvia Park
Publisher: Oneworld
Number of Pages: 400
ISBN: 978-1836430834
Date Published: Apr. 5, 2025
Price: INR 410
Book Review
In Silvia Park’s dazzling debut “Luminous“, the future isn’t just wired—it’s haunted. Set in a newly unified Korea rebuilt after the eerily named “Bloodless War,” this sci-fi stunner invites us into a world where robots aren’t just tools—they’re family, memory, and sometimes, the ghost in the machine.
At the story’s core are Jun, a robot crimes detective hardened by duty, and his sister Morgan, a brilliant roboticist with more than a few emotional circuits frayed. Their bond is stitched together by love, loss, and the lingering memory of Yoyo—their robot brother who vanished long ago. As they trace the echoes of Yoyo’s absence through cases, code, and conflicted emotions, Park deftly unspools a narrative as intimate as it is cerebral.
This is no cold, clinical future. Park’s writing pulses with warmth, wit, and philosophical firepower. She doesn’t just ask the big questions—she lets them bloom slowly through shifting perspectives, elegant world-building, and moments of startling emotional clarity. Robots here aren’t metal monoliths—they’re playmates, protectors, and sometimes uncanny mirrors of our deepest fears and desires. Can machines grieve? Can they remember? And more pressingly—can we?
Readers and critics alike have hailed “Luminous” as a rare gem: a tale as heady as Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and as heartfelt as a lullaby. With themes of consciousness, kinship, and what it means to be alive, it dares to dream in binary and breathe poetry into circuits. The ending? It glows—a soft, melancholic radiance that lingers long after the final page.
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The author doesn’t just debut—she detonates expectations. “Luminous” is a genre-bending, soul-searching, emotionally intelligent marvel that peers into tomorrow with a poetic eye and an empathetic heart. If you’re looking for a story that ponders existence while pulling at your heartstrings, this novel will leave you thinking, feeling, and maybe—just maybe—believing that even machines can shine.
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