I loved the premise of this book but had a very hard time getting into it. I wasn't able to connect with the characters and the pacing made it too easy to step away and I ended up skimming quite a bit. Sorry!

A future where robots live side by side with humans? Yes, please! I loved the concept and desperately wanted to love this book but I struggled with comprehension in the early chapters. Slowly the story came into focus for me and there was a significant shift in the second half of the book. By 70% I knew I was going to love it. At 95% I was obsessed and vowed to read it for a second time. If you struggle in the beginning don’t give up. This read is worth it!

I really wanted to like this book, but reading it felt too much like work. I stepped away from the book several times and struggled to return to it. But the premise of having robots as family seemed so promising. I think I just never connected with any of the characters and the plot moved too slowly for me. This is a fine book for someone, but just not me.

Wow!! This book was fantastic. In this novel, we see a future society where there are humans, robots, and humans with robotic features. We meet different human people who have faced specific traumas and rely on their robots, and then we see the challenges the humans and robots face about emotions, feelings, etc.

If you’re a fan of Kazuo Ishiguro, specifically Never Let Me Go or Klara and the Sun, I think you’ll love this.

Thanks to Netgalley for providing me with an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I normally finish a book in 1-3 days, so the fact that this took me an entire month to read is kind of wild to me—especially considering it was one of the best books I’ve read so far this year. I even preordered the hardcover. I’ve been recommending it to anyone who will listen, showing off the cover to coworkers in an attempt to entice them into preordering alongside me, trying to coax others into signing up for Netgalley so that we can talk about the book…Hell, I even got my therapist to preorder it.

There’s something about Luminous that is utter crack for trans men. Every trans guy I’ve explained the premise to (including myself) has been instantly rabid for the plot. There are multiple protagonists in Luminous, one of which being a queer trans man named Jun. Jun? He’s great. I loved him. You’ll love him too, especially if you’re transmasc.

The writing in this book is gorgeous. The pacing is tight, the characters are multifaceted and have very distinct voices, and the critique on capitalism and consumerism? Stunning. Perfection. I could go on and on about the author’s exploration into consumerism, but I’ll save that for my best friend once they finish the book.

I cried multiple times throughout reading, and I’m not ashamed to say it. I’m tearing up right now just thinking about it. I’ve read almost a hundred books this year, but Luminous may in fact be my favorite of them all.

Perfectly average book that could have gone up a notch with some careful editing. Still, pretty excellent for a debut novel from a short fiction author.

Big thank you NetGalley and to the publisher for the chance to review this book pre-release. This was a solid speculative fiction. I liked the way that technology was portrayed, and the dynamic of the siblings was interesting. I liked reading it, and I found that it was a really solid sci-fi. I can't wait to hopefully read more of Ms. Park's works! A more formal review will be available on my IG/TikTok and Goodreads for release.

Luminous by Silvia Park is a beautiful work of speculative fiction. The book is set in a reunified Korea that has many aspects of the present but also a large robot population as well as human characters with robotic modifications. A blended family of siblings is at the center of the story. Two of them human: Jun who works with the national police force in the robot crimes division and Morgan who works for a famous robot design company, Imagine Friends. The third sibling of the group is Yoyo who was created by Jun and Morgan's father. He was the eldest when he was introduced to the family but has never aged, though his wisdom has increased immensely in his years on the planet. Interestingly, Yoyo's chapters of the book are told from the perspective of those around him, most often centering on the character Ruijjie who has medical issues and thus robotic components to help her survive. Yoyo is estranged from the rest of the group though the memories and bonds remain strong for all siblings.

As a reader these three characters bring us into Park's futuristic Korea in a very complete way and it is a fascinating place to be. Through Jun's investigations,"frustrations were painted all over her body, and she made a troubled face when Jun asked to see her arm where a client had used his switchblade to carve his initials into her wrist." Through Morgan's corporate life, "Christina was like an eco-flush toilet, well-intentioned and ineffective." And Yoyo, who remains a bit of an enigma throughout the whole book, a child, an angel, a trickster broken in many ways but enduring.

Luminous is part mystery, part morality tale with gorgeous writing and imagery. Anyone who enjoys Science Fiction is going to appreciate this clever and moving novel.

I'm not sure how I feel about this story but it definitely was interesting! There were moments where I was really engaged and loved where the story was going, and there were moments that it fell flat for me. The main thing that pulled me out of the story was the choppiness of the writing and story. However, the overall story is beautiful in the way that it weaves together family, grief, and humanity.

What a great rhythm and development for this novel. If there is a future where we have robots serving us, this is how I imagine it and the pros and cons that come with it. It's a very smart novel because it questions, challenges, and tests our emotions and expectations of having a machine as a companion or lover.
It has so many levels, layers, and themes, exploring family, relationships, progress, loss, coming of age, sexuality, and religion... It's simple because it's focused on a few characters and seems to be a mystery, but its complexity resolves around the fact that all themes seem to be connected to a family. At the the same time, we feel that this dystopian unified Korea is a larger world where the robots serve the humans and replace love, children, sons, daughters, and pets, exploring loneliness, and many other emotions. I love its complexity, and I couldn't be away from it for long, wanting to go back to that family story and to the real meaning of having a robot fulfill its purpose (robot's way of committing suicide.)

It’s hard to stand out in a crowded field of humanoid robot/human relationship fiction but this is a truly unique novel in a stunning way. Park made a lot of brilliant choices in the plot and developing the culture/rules of society built around the technological advancements that really work and create a truly engaging read. The prose is diverse, reflecting the pure talent of this author.

The character development didn’t work for me as much as I wanted it to as the novel went on. While it was impressive how Park navigated what it truly means to be an individual, artificial or human, and there were some really strong moments, overall this novel failed to get me to care about individual characters for more than a couple scenes. The themes each character was trying to represent overshadowed too much the realism of each character. It might work for some readers as the thought process and intersection of the plot is really excellent but I just couldn’t get into it until the last 5-10% of the book.

Luminous is set in Seoul, in a unified Korea. Humans and bionic humans reign over bots that serve them, become “children “ in their families or even become their lovers. The city is littered with robot junkyards, gangs and people who use robots for sport. Ruije, along with school friends, scour the junkyards to find new legs to replace bad bionic ones. It is there she finds Yo-yo, a complete bot she connects with.

Jun, a human fitted with bionic parts, is a detective on the hunt for a missing child bot, the daughter of a famous artist. A few doors down from the artist lives Morgan, Jun’s estranged sister and chief bot designer. Their father was one of the masterminds behind the bots, first created for the military. Jun and Morgan had a bot brother that disappeared along time ago.

Silvia Park tackles the question of what it means to be human with all its messiness and its ability to feel/experience pain, grief and love and to create true memories. This is juxtaposed against the inhuman bots. At times it seems the bots display their humanity and you have to wonder whether they are imbued with human frailties. With the leaps and bounds AI has taken recently, is this a cautionary tale? Putting that aside, it is a wonderful tale of friendship, family, love and vulnerability.

Thank you NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for this ARC. All opinions are my own.

This was an interesting concept, well-portrayed, but I always felt a little behind, whether I understood a phrase or the intent behind a comment. I just felt a little off, like I was missing something. The Korean setting, after a reunification, added immensely to the story. The whole robot/human interaction and differences was interesting as well, and it was easy to see how the lines were blurred throughout this history and the story. The whole murder investigation seemed superfluous to me.

3.5 stars, rounded up to 4 stars.

I received a complimentary copy of the novel from the publisher and NetGalley, and my review is being left freely.

Thank you @simonandschuster @netgalley for the gifted copy
This comes out 3/1/25

Sometime in the future, when North and South Korea have been reunified, there's a daughter and son who were raised by a master robot maker, who created a robot for a son, as a 12 yo boy. Both children considered the robot their brother but his disappearance several years later left a chasm and brokenness. Many years later the daughter has followed in her father's footsteps as an emotional intelligence creator for a robot making company and the son has enlisted in a robot crimes unit. A case pops up about a missing robot girl.

I was so wholly wrapped up in this world. Robots are lifelike and teetering on indistinguishable from humans. Apart from the fact that their faces are recognizable as being mass produced or so obviously stolen from a celebrity, there is no immediate way to distinguish their artificiality unless they give themselves away, with their superhuman-ness. But for all this power, they are second rate citizens, quick to be abused, used in all the ways humans use each other, but also debased to a new level since their creation relies on a human desire usually rooted in something selfish and dark. They also bear the burden of so much data storage. Humans are gifted a natural memory loss to forget, to blind themselves and to turn away from something startling true. Robots will not have that gift.

Thank you so much to NetGalley for an advanced copy of this book. I was eager to pick this one up as the summary reminded me of Klara in the Sun, a book I enjoyed reading many years ago. However, I did not find the writing style to be endearing enough to hold my attention while reading. This caused me a lot of issues with wanting to pick the book up and finish it. Definitely not a favorite read, but I would still recommend it to those interested.

I was genuinely excited for this book because of the premise, but the writing style wasn't for me. I found it overly narrative and disconnected, which is awkward when the point is "what does it mean to be human." I think I was hoping for a book more like "Murderbot."

Thank you to NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for the ARC,

One of the best ARCS I’ve read so far. Thanks to Simon & Schuster for the early copy.

Aside from being a compelling story with strong themes about identity and loss, Silvia Park just paints her words. Her writing really makes you feel the emotions of the scene. The plot is set in a sci-fi future where the Koreas are united and an Apple-like company called “Imagine Friends” makes robot companions that are practically indistinguishable from people. Park explores stuff like what makes someone real/alive, finding meaning after loss, and the idea that all we want is connection and purpose. She even weaves in difficult sub-plots about alt-right misogyny groups and transphobia without it feeling contrived or tacked on. There were some parts of the plot that got a little too philosophical for me to easily understand, but overall I really enjoyed the story and all the personalities in it.

This book is billed as for fans of Klara and the Sun and I totally get that. It’s a story about humans and their humanoid bots…about AFs (Artifical Friends) in Klara and IFs (Imagine Friends) in Luminous. Luminous tells the story of Jun and Morgan and their long-lost brother (IF) Yoyo. The three had been like siblings, so close that it is seemingly impossible that they have been separated. In the present, Jun is an detective, currently working on a robot-kidnapping case, and Morgan is the lead designer for a robotics company set to come out with the newest IF issue, a robot-boy Morgan has modeled after Yoyo himself.

Luminous is set in a reunified Korea, in a Seoul populated with humans and bots and humans with robotic parts. The city is littered with robot junkyards, in one of which a young girl, Ruijie, sifts through abandoned parts to refit her failing body. She finds a surprisingly lifelike robot named Yoyo and the two make fast friends.

I enjoyed this book, if not quite as much as Klara and the Sun. Luminous is darker, taking place largely in the underbelly of a large city, where violence and cruelty reign. But the questions it asks are similar to the usual sci-fi questions – “Do you think the lines I say have less value because you can track the input data? What about the lines you say to each other? Aren’t they the same lines you downloaded from thousands of sources?” The writing is beautiful at times, as it weaves together a story of family, grief and what it means to be human – “If truth is a mirror that fell on the ground, we can scramble for a shard and hold that up as our experience.” This not hard-core sci-fi…it is literary fiction, but it is literature well-done and worth a read.

Thanks to NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for providing me with the e-ARC of this title.

Luminous by Silvia Park is a beautifully sculpted novel that begs the question, "What does it mean to be human." This novel follows a sibling trio, two humans (although the word cyborg comes to mind for one character) and a robot, in a world not too distant from our own, as they live out their lives at a pace that shows that relationships between man and machine will continue to change. A bit muddled in the second half, storylines can be hard to follow at times. That said, if you are a fan of social commentary, as well as sci-fi, this novel is well worth it for the conversations you will have afterwards.

3.5 Stars. Thank you to the publisher for inviting me to read this fascinating, unique story. The setting and premise were very engaging. I appreciated the seamless way one of the main character's transgender status was dealt with--no exposition or explaining or teaching. It was awesome to have it feel just a natural part of the story. In another fresh approach, addiction was touched upon through the same characters struggle with his addiction to virtual reality.

My issues: At times the text is so novel in sentence structure and word choice that it can be a little hard to follow. Overall, I couldn't connect well with the characters, feeling kept somewhat at arms length from all of them. I'm not sure if this was just because of the frequent changes in point of view, or even if perhaps it was somewhat intentional on the author's part.

It was this disconnect, though, that didn't pull me past the middle of the book where the story really seemed to lag. I skimmed the last half.

This book has a fantastic story, a bit hidden at times. The writing style was unique and engaging for the most part. Thank you to Simon and Schuster and NetGalley for the chance to read an early copy in exchange for this honest review.