I feel like this summer I read a lot a books that were thought experiments on AI technology and our relationship to tech and the loneliness it says it’s solving but more likely creating.

Luminous by Sylvia Park does that. Jun and Morgan are estranged siblings and whose sibling Yo-yo, and early humanoid robot designed by their father disappears. Morgan grows up to make robots for their fathers company while June works as a detective for robot crimes.

They are brought back together through an investigation to make sense of their childhood and what was lost when Yo-yo left.

Unfortunately this book followed me reading The Dream Hotel which I loved but I had also probably maxed out on this discussion of technology and humanity. I also am a fan of Kazuo Ishiguro whose Klara and the Sun feels very similar but for me was better.

I’ll also admit that I love books exploring AI, tech and panopticon themes but am less in love with books about robots/robotics.

The story took a bit to get into as it is winding perspectives together and it took me awhile to become interested in the characters and I’m not sure I ever invested fully in them.

That said I think it is a worthwhile topic and for those interested in thinking through where technology is headed and how we determine humanness and rights/protections there is a lot to enjoy in this book. The crime novel part of this book was definitely what kept me most engaged as well!

Luminous by Silvia Park is a haunting, cerebral debut that pulses with emotional depth and speculative brilliance. As my first read from Park, I was struck by their ability to blend futuristic world-building with intimate character studies. The novel doesn’t just imagine a reunified Korea populated by robots it interrogates what it means to be human in a world where the line between organic and artificial is constantly shifting. Ruijie, the young girl at the heart of the story, is unforgettable. Her degenerative condition and fierce belief in technology as salvation make her both vulnerable and visionary. Her journey is deeply personal, yet it mirrors broader questions about identity and embodiment. Jun and Morgan, estranged siblings, are layered with grief, guilt, and longing. Jun’s stoic exterior as a war veteran contrasts beautifully with Morgan’s conflicted brilliance as a robot designer. Their emotional arcs are slow-burning but ultimately rewarding. Yoyo, the robot boy, is the novel’s emotional anchor. Park crafts him with such nuance that he transcends the trope of “robot with feelings”—he’s tender, curious, and heartbreakingly real. The story unfolds across a dystopian Seoul, where robots serve as companions, children, and even lovers. Park’s pacing is deliberate, sometimes meditative, but always purposeful. The murder investigation that reconnects Jun and Morgan serves as a spine for the narrative, but the real tension lies in the emotional revelations and philosophical dilemmas. The discovery of Yoyo in a scrapyard is a turning point that reorients the entire story. His presence forces each character to confront their past and their assumptions about sentience. A late-stage reveal about Morgan’s secret project adds a layer of ethical complexity that reframes her motivations and deepens the central conflict. The final chapters deliver a quiet but devastating twist that ties together the siblings’ fractured history with the fate of Yoyo, leaving readers with lingering questions about memory, loss, and legacy. Luminous is not a fast-paced thriller it’s a slow burn that rewards patience with emotional resonance and philosophical depth. Silvia Park’s prose is elegant and restrained, and their thematic ambition is impressive. As a first-time reader, I’m genuinely excited to explore more of their work. If you’re drawn to speculative fiction that’s as introspective as it is imaginative, this one glows.

thank you simon & schuster and netgalley for the digital arc!!

robot books are SO back. i screamed when i finished this because i simply didn’t want it to be over. UGH.

this book is so creative and captivating and FUN! i love robots! but i also love how introspective this book was, routinely asking hard questions about humanity and morality and identity. my perfect mix of playful and serious.

at times, i thought this book was attempting a bit more than it could successfully handle. at the same time, i appreciated how much silvia park was willing to attempt such an ambitious project. i can't believe this is a debut.

one of my favorite books of the year (not a hard list to make tbh, but it deserves the praise)

While the prologue immediately drew me in with its vivid imagery (I could picture this post-apocalyptic Seoul, ravaged by robots and runaways, so clearly), that fell by the wayside as soon as the story began. The characters that we were introduced to felt one-dimensional on the page, with their interactions and their motivations feeling familiar if you've read your fair share of litfic. Unfortunately, the promise of an intriguing speculative world to explore didn't quite carry over past the first few pages for me.

Thanks to NetGalley & Simon & Schuster for the ARC!

Silvia Park’s "Luminous" is a convoluted debut novel that piques interest more than it holds attention.

"Klara and the Sun," this is not.

This is a book that uses its genre and concepts for texture but not much else. In 2025, we are inundated with media about what artificial intelligence might mean for the concept of selfhood, so any story about robots has its work cut out for it. I’ve listened to some of Silvia Park’s astute reflections on AI, so I was excited to see how they might be folded in here. Unfortunately, there’s nothing too distinctive on offer in "Luminous." Each time something interesting comes up, such as a parallel between transgenderism and transhumanism or the much-referenced unified Korea, it feels incidental to the plot rather than informative.

Other reviewers have noted that the cluttered storytelling eventually coalesces into a narrative, but I felt that it was a little too late. Park delights in the world they’ve meticulously crafted, and there’s some pulpy enjoyment to be had, but after a point, I found myself struggling to discern what the book is about.

As a reviewer, I always like to find things to celebrate, even if I don’t particularly enjoy a book, but I think it’s telling that I feel like there’s very little to respond to in "Luminous." Maybe others will find something to love here, but I finished feeling ambivalent.

2 stars

I borderline hated this book. There was something about the writing and pacing that I didn’t like. It felt hard to follow and that there were random sentences inserted everywhere. The idea of the book was good (although not necessarily new or fresh), but in my opinion it could’ve been done better. A lot of the elements didn’t make sense, I didn’t relate to the characters, and overall it was very hard to follow along.

Fascinating, character-driven sci-fi that blurs the lines between human and robot. It's also super queer! I struggled with the pacing, and it felt a bit long for me, but I'm still thinking about the characters and themes well after reading it, so there's definitely some great stuff here.

LUMINOUS is a thought-provoking debut novel that imagines a near-future unified Korea where robot companions are commonplace. This premise offered plenty of opportunities for speculation and posed many philosophical questions about technology, memory, ethics, and so on. As it alternated between the perspectives of multiple characters, I was curious and eager to see how their paths will intersect. It's also a family drama, as well as a story of friendship between Ruijie and Yoyo, which was my favorite part. There's a lot going on in this book (and more than enough for a book club to discuss!), but there's also so much heart. Sometimes a stunning sentence would stop me in my tracks. Highly recommend for fans of literary sci-fi and hope to see more novels from Silvia Park!

Very interesting world-building, but very dense. Far more vibes than plot. I made it to 43% and I'm still not sure where it's going. Worth starting, but even though it's short, I can't bring myself to finish.

In the world of this novel, robots are very real, and realistic, and live among the other characters. Many, but not all, are children… adopted by humans who maybe can’t have them, or don’t want to bring them into a world that is suffering from climate disaster.

We meet several children in a junkyard, who are hunting for robot parts. There, they also meet a robot child, and befriend him. Who is he, why is in the junkyard if he’s still functional, and does he have a family?

One child we meet is Taewon, who actually works there with his uncle. His uncle is not very kind to him, or anyone else for that matter. But Taewon is an orphan, so is his uncle’s taking care of him enough to absolve him of otherwise being a jerk?

We also meet Jun, who is a trans male police officer with some bionic parts. His body needed to be partially reconstructed anyway, after a war injury, so he used the opportunity to make himself into what he wanted to be. Now he works in robot crimes, and takes on a case of a missing female child who is a robot. Her owner, an older woman, thinks she was kidnapped.

This case begrudgingly brings Jun back into the orbit of his younger sister, Morgan, who is the missing child’s neighbor. Morgan has a high pressure job in one of the leading robotics companies, and they’re preparing the launch of the next line of their children robots. She also designed and built a robot companion of her own, though, and adult male who she modeled after her favorite movie star.

We learn that these two siblings grew up with another, one of the earliest robot children to be built. Their own father was a pioneer in this field, which might influence their thinking on the topic. Both are still haunted, although in different ways, by their older brother. He went missing years ago, and they don’t have clear answers about what happened to him. Also, is it weird to forever think of him as the “older” brother when he would perpetually stay “twelve?”

All kinds of questions abound about whether or not a robot is “real,” whether they should have rights, whether their presence is keeping the humans from forming relationships with each other, and more.

It’s sci-fi at its most existential, wrapped up in a police/crime story, and a family drama. Which would probably appeal to fans of, let’s say, Blade Runner.

A fascinating novel following society in a unified Korea where humans and robots co-exist. The different characters are fascinating, and the discussions on technology's place in the world was the perfect addition.

The moment feels absolutely perfect for this book. Luminous digs deep into ideas about what it means to have consciousness, a soul, feelings, or a body. Through three main perspectives all set in a future reunified Korea the novel tells the story of a lost robot, and a found one. What does it mean to be human!!! What does it mean to be alive!!! We may never know, but not for lack of trying. Tackling these issues of personhood and bodily autonomy in a time when we are using AI more and more was both interesting and upsetting. If you felt let down by Never Let Me Go, check this out it was much better (sorry).

Thank you to NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for this honest review!

What is the humanity in a robot? That is a question that has been asked many times over the past few decades with the rise of technology. It's currently more pressing than ever with the current prominence in AI and it's advancements.

This question sits at the heart of Silvia Park's "Luminous" which tells the story of 3 siblings living in a future Korea (united as one country post-war). The eldest is a former soldier turned cop, working in robot related crimes. He himself has been altered to have android parts after being severely injured during the war. The middle child is working at the most prominent robotics company, about to launch the newest boy model which she lead the creation on. The youngest child is an android, who has been separate from the rest of his family for years for reasons unknown to the reader.

Told in alternating perspectives between the three siblings, I found this a fascinating and captivating sci-fi adjacent novel. The high points were the themes of the android humanity as well as the diving into the relationship of the siblings.

Luminous was a super interesting read. I loved the character study and the writing felt propulsive. I'd read more from the author.

Robot siblings, family drama, murder, forbidden love, What’s not to like? I did feel like there was a little too much going on at times and some threads were not as explored as they could have been but the world building was solid, I thought the teens were a standout.

This was the book I'd wanted KLARA AND THE SUN to be. I really felt like Park provides a much more nuanced approach to AI and androids, and the setting was far more interesting than that of Ishiguro's novel. I felt like I was watching a near-future Korean drama on TV. Interesting characters, interesting moral issues raised. Highly recommend.

An interesting debut novel set in a future unified Korea where robots have become commonplace whether as domestics or adopted children. Parents even strive to increase the capabilities of their children by fitting them with robot parts. The story centres around three characters: Jun, a cop in the Robot Crimes division, his sister Morgan who works in one of the top three robot manufacturing companies and a differently abled child called Ruijie. The three characters are linked through Yoyo, a robot Ruijee befriends in a robot scrap yard. Yoyo is the long lost presumed dead brother of Jun and Morgan. The premise of the novel is very promising and it deals with myriad thought provoking issues like the demographics of a world populated by humans and robots, social class, the parental quest for the perfect child and so on. Overall, I found the book too long and the story too slow paced. The writing is not easy to skim over. I plan to re-read this when I have enough time to savour every line of the story. Recommend for anybody who is interested in AI, a robot populated word and social commentary on class.

Well, that was a book. Not one I particularly enjoyed though. I had such high hopes for it, maybe that was the problem? It has high ratings on both Goodreads and StoryGraph, so maybe I’m the problem. It started off fairly strong, and ended decently enough, but the middle? Snoozefest. I couldn’t have cared less. It was a slog for me to finish, but I put so many days in, I couldn’t just DNF.

Luminous is the debut novel for Silvia Park, and as such evinces some of the issues that sometimes crop up in first books in areas such as structure and pace. Those issues, however, are more than eclipsed by the book’s shimmering prose, frequently moving moments, and thoughtful exploration of a number of themes, all circling around the question of what it means to be “human.”

Park sets her novel in a unified Korea, roughly twenty years after the war that ended their separation. In this not-too-distant future, robots are nearly as ubiquitous as today’s smartphones, appearing in all facets of life and shaped into form based on function, with many of them androids (humanoid form). Major/important characters in the world of Luminous include:

• Morgan, a high-up “personality programmer” for Imagine Friends, the largest, most advanced manufacturer of humanoid robots in Korea, which is about to launch a huge new model (Boy X). Already anxious over the launch, Morgan is also stressed out over her relationship with Stephen, her own live-in robot that despite being designed/programmed by her seems unable to meet her desires, whether romantic or carnal.

• Jun, Morgan’s brother and an injured war veteran who now works in law enforcement in Robot Crimes, mostly dealing with missing, stolen, or abused robots. He himself is part-mechanical following a post-injury surgery that “repaired him by attaching not the bionic to his body but his body to the bionic.” Being trans adds another layer to his view of his own identify (when he is confused for a robot, a not-uncommon event, he compares it to how he used to be misgendered). His storyline involves a search for a missing robot girl.

• Ruiije, a tween girl suffering from a degenerative illness — “the doctors lobbed acronyms like ALS, PMA, an MMA” — that has her needing a robotic exoskeleton and that will eventually require major bionic surgery. After scavenging in the robot salvage yard and finding an old, abandoned robot (Yoyo) in the form of a young boy, she and several classmates form an attachment to him, trying to help him repair himself while protecting him from the “scrappers” who break up found robots for parts. As they interact with Yoyo, it quickly becomes clear he is a wildly different sort of robot than any of them have ever seen or heard about.

• Taewon: one of Ruiije’s above schoolmates who lives with his scrapper uncle

• Stephen: Morgan’s robot who wrestles with his failure to please her (particularly the balance between subservience and challenging stimulation), religion, and his own sense of self-identity

• Morgan and Jun’s dad, who is mostly absent but whose impact is felt throughout, as he and his colleague made the breakthrough that led to the modern robot (his work in “neurobiotics” underpins Morgan’s), though shortly afterward he abandoned humanoid robots to work on “zoobots.” He also, when Morgan and Jun were young, brought home a boy robot that became their brother for some years until he mysteriously disappeared, leaving an emotional scar that both Morgan and Jun are still trying to deal with in their own ways.

The storylines — Morgan’s big launch, Jun’s investigation into the missing girl robot, Ruiije’s new robot friend, and Stephen’s quest for a sense of self — eventually converge, as might be expected. Thankfully though, this doesn’t happen in any sort of neatly tied off and contrived fashion as can sometimes be the case with these structures. Instead, the plots come together messily, chaotically, as is often the case in real, unscripted life, and the book is better for that decision.

Park explores all the familiar themes one expects in this sort of work. What is consciousness? What defines being “human”? Can robots be “human”? What is the line between human, augmented human, cyborgs, and robots? Does a line even exist? How will the permeation of robots into society affect our society and culture? Affect how we view the world, each other, the sentient beings we now share it with? What will be the impact of robots in warfare? Can robots have feelings? Do they “die” like humans or like an old toy? Can humans and robots form “real” relationships? Fall in love? While these ideas have been explored in sci-fi through countless works (particularly Dick’s classic and highly influential Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep), Luminous reminded me most strongly of Kazuo Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun, and both Brian Aldiss’ “Supertoys Last All Summer Long” and Spielberg’s subsequent adaptation/expansion, AI, works that focus as much (if not more) on character and society as on technology, often in mournful, bittersweet fashion.

As familiar as these themes are, they don’t feel overly familiar or trite, presented in a way that reads original and individualized to this particular story. Park brings us face to face with these questions immediately in the opening paragraph:

That summer was immortal. July was especially savage with thirty heat deaths in Seoul, punctuated by the spectacular fizzing breakdown of a GS-100 security android when it crumpled knees-first outside a United Korea Bank. A cleaner broomed away the remains. The head was left grinning on the pavement, chirping at passersby to warn them of today’s heat.

We get the subtle information about the unified Korea via the bank. The key themes of immortality and death. The ubiquity of the robots (specific models, specific tasks, the way no one takes notice of them). And that wonderfully unclear use of “punctuated by” — is the robot interrupting the enumeration of human (i.e. “real” deaths) or is it part of the enumeration? And what does it mean that the head is left? Is this the robotic promise of immortality — it’s not truly dead? Or is it a mark of the callous disregard with which robots are held? It’s a great opening.

These questions continue throughout. With regard to how humans view robots, Jun’s department often investigates the missing robots as more akin to property damage/theft in the somewhat cursory investigations: not a lot of time, not a lot of resources, just some fines even for total destruction (child robot crime is treated a bit more harshly). This perspective comes across as well when one of his co-workers reminisces about a case where he went to inform the “parents” of what had happened to their robot/”child” and how when he rang their doorbell, “”the same boy answered. That couple couldn’t wait two weeks before replacing their son with the same model … If you need a coffee machine, you get a new coffee machine.” On the other hand, Jun muses how he “had seen people mourn robots like they were beloved pets or lovers, or even children.” Meanwhile, the Church places “no robots” signs outside their doors, noting on them that “Robots, not having a soul, are unable to worship God and have no place in the Church.” Though that doesn’t stop Stephen from arguing that “I’d like to think in the end God would be merciful” as he and Jun debate souls and the afterlife.

Which brings us to the idea of death and immortality which, like questions of identity and humanity, run throughout. Sometimes it is overt, as when Yoyo tells Ruiije he will live forever, or she thinks about how this new technological work “make a promise to her: Death is a problem than can be solved.” Sometimes it arrives via analogy, say through a group of robot rabbits or Ruiije’s pet cat that died when she was young, or through allusion, via multiple references to Peter Pan, famous as the boy who never ages, which makes him the perfect vehicle as a symbol for robots who themselves, seemingly at least, are frozen at their programmed age.

Though that becomes one of the overriding questions of the book: can these robots, in fact, age? I.e. develop and mature into something other than what they began as? I won’t spoil that by giving the answer but will simply say that all these questions provide for some deeply poignant, moving moments conveyed via lovely language. On a prose level, the beauty is sharply, often gorgeously written. Park shows an equally deft hand with the worldbuilding, which is rich, detailed, but also economically presented.

As for those issues I mentioned at the outset. The pacing sometimes bogs down, some characters and scenes feel like they either wanted to be expanded or cut, I’m not quite sure Park nailed the balance between offering up too much information and holding back information, and there sometimes seems an awkward stylistic and narrative tension between the older characters’ storyline and Ruiije’s, always as if a YA story was being grafted onto a more adult one, though I’d say that overstates the case and its impact (I just can’t think of a better way to describe it).
But while those issues were noticeable, as noted in the introduction, they are more than outweighed by the book’s many, many strengths: the rich worldbuilding, the beautiful prose, the poignant emotions, and the delving into some deeply thoughtful and topical philosophical questions. Highly recommended.

*Luminous* by Silvia Park is a beautifully written, enchanting journey that blends fantasy and heart. The story follows a young protagonist discovering their inner light while navigating a world filled with mystery and magic. Park’s writing sparkles with vivid descriptions and emotional depth, drawing readers into a world where self-discovery and courage shine through. The characters are wonderfully relatable, and the plot is both captivating and heartwarming, with just the right balance of adventure and reflection. Whether you’re looking for a story of personal growth or simply love a touch of whimsy, *Luminous* offers both in spades. It’s the kind of book that leaves you feeling uplifted and inspired, with a sense that anything is possible if you follow your own light. A delightful read that’s perfect for fans of imaginative fiction and anyone in need of a little brightness!