Flux is a modern version of a classic noir potboiler. It is clever and keeps the reader captivated. Will make a great limited series.

I feel like this book had a great premise, but it fell flat. The main character wasn't likable and the rest of the characters were only there for the plot. There were a lot of things happening offscreen and the plot felt confusing at times. I do like the themes of this book, but I wish the plot was more intriguing.

Thanks to NetGalley and Melville House Publishing for the ARC copy. This has not affected my review at all, which are my own thoughts.

I want to preface by saying that because I gave Flux 3 stars and will say that I didn't like it, it does not mean that it is a bad book, this is my personal opinion because, in this case, the not likeness of the book is quite subjective. Y'all find out in a moment. First, a little introduction to Flux, and after, to my thoughts.

We have Bo, an 8 year old kid who has recently lost her mother; Brandon, a 28 year old man that has lost his job at a magazine which has been bought out by a bigger one; and Blue, a 48 year old key witness to technological crimes that struggles with family issues. Blending with neo-noir elements and speculative fiction, the lives of these three characters will unravel a web of secrets bigger than all of them as an experimental life-changing technology develops right under everybody's noses.

So, my problem with this book was that I was promise time travel as Brandon discovered that his superiors might be using it to cover all types of crimes. And, yet, there was very little time travel on the page, laid out like a naked baby. It was subtle and, objectively, it was done incredibly, blending Brandon's life with the time traveling that was affecting him in all the ways possible; the main one, mentally.
Brandon's deteriorism was my perfect part of the book, and I normally find middles dragging or too short on details, but Flux's was one of the best I've read in a while.

I struggled with the start, 'cause it took us like a 100 pages to get to the good stuff, when Brandon accepts his new job and everything starts to unravel slowly but surely in a subliminal way that requires the readers full attention. But after that, I kept going through the pages, wanting to know more about Brandon, the F1 and find out the truth. I also didn't like the ending, which might tie the subplots and the main plot together, picking up all the details laid out before, but it was done in such a passive way and so little development of the characters involve (except Brandon) that it gave me whiplash, taking into account that we have been going up and up all the way through the middle. Tensions rising, truths getting hidden and revealed later and Brandon's development and raising drama. and then, the author goes and destroys it all in a couple chapters. To say I was disappointed is to come short in vocabulary for how I felt at the moment.
I even went to my sibling and complaint, which is something I rarely do😂

Anyway. As I said, the book is objectively good, because of the way foreshadowing is done in such a subtle way, how Brandon gets developed throughout the book and until the very end, the lay out of his character and how his obsession with past live events drives his present and future to the point of changing lost of things about the story in Flux at the very last chapter. The plot was coherent and with barely any plot points. Even the secondary characters were defined and have reasons to be in the book other than fulfill a role in Brandon's life.

So, again, the problem with Flux comes from me, my expectations created by my reading and interpretation of the premise and how I hyped it up for myself a bit too much. But also, my other main issue is how women get treated in Flux. Whether they get a name or not (though, if I remember correctly, all of them get one, which is a mini point in favor of Flux) they get quite mistreated, only there to serve the plot, serve Brandon's emotional development or to be a victim and get killed for the sake of making others look bad or make them guilty if they have any empathy and morality.

Bit of spoilers, so feel free to skip this paragraph, but when, near the end, a character, a woman Brandon has slept with at the start of the book, and about whom he has barely given any thought after that, reappears and tells him that she is pregnant, I lost it there and then. As I said, she gets barely remember by Brandon in chapters after they have sex, but also, he was quite of an asshole and rummage through her things while she takes a shower after the sex; when she finds our, she gets rightfully angry and kicks him out. Only to, months later, go looking for him to have the baby together and marry. I understand that she might have not be in the best position to raise a child alone, but come on. And is not like she, or the daughter she has with Brandon, get treated any better in subsequent chapters.

End of spoiler. But yeah, I hate it when women get treated like that in books, feeling like they're only there for the emotional arc/development of the main character, who happens to be a man.

Anyway, this book wasn't so bad looking at the big picture, but if you're here for time traveling shenanigans, maybe look somewhere else, because Flux is an exploration of character, of familial connections and the big consequences of our actions at all our times through life. It is also a depiction of being Asian an growing like that in America

This book was a ride! Told in two different timelines, they end up converging in more ways than one. I honestly, wasn't sure what was going to happen next or even what was happening most of the time. And while some parts still have me wondering... i really liked this time-travel book. It's a weird comp but I get The Time Traveler's Wife vibes, because this isn't time travel in the sci-fi sense. It's time travel in the family, trying to understand what happened to his family and making up for what he believes are the injustices of circumstances.

This was an interesting read, unlike most books I pick up. There were interesting twist and the story was not what I expected. I enjoyed the majority of the book, but at times the pacing wasn’t what was seeking.

When I finished this book, I was on a walk, and I had to stop myself from getting a stranger's attention so I could talk about the ending.

I'm not actually kidding. I had to remind myself that THAT IS NOT A NORMAL THING TO DO and THE STRANGER WOULD NOT APPRECIATE SPOILERS because that is how much I was overflowing with love for (and opinions about) this book.

But let's go back to the beginning (because skipping around in time feels appropriate when talking about Flux, eh?). I started this book three times—and enjoyed it every time. And in fact, when I finished reading, I realized that I would have considered just restarting the book AGAIN, just for fun, to see what new perspectives I got from a reread.

I promise, I'm not some obsessed Flux-head, and this book isn't so dense that it requires multiple readthroughs or anything. It's actually incredibly easy to read. But I loved and appreciated each of the timelines, and there really was enough to notice that the rereads were never boring—they just felt like coming home to (new) friends.

I recommend jumping in with both feet with no idea what to expect (if that's still possible at this point—I know there's been buzz about this book for a while). This book has been billed as a lot of things it's not (if someone told you it's a thriller, ignore everything else that person has to say about this book), but it truly is way more fun if you let yourself have your "Wait, WTF?" moments.

You'll love this book if...
• You're looking for some genre-bending Weird Fiction (that's high praise)
• You need a GOOD twisty time travel palate cleanser after certain big-name disappointments over the last few years
• You want a book that makes you think without making your brain hurt

This might not be for you if...
• It's important for you for the science side of your sci-fi to be completely explained (it's okay if that's you! love you guys! but this is one of those books that does not do that)
• You want every single question answered when you read a book (this isn't a spoiler! you'll be sitting with your questions for a large part of the reading experience, and that's part of the fun)
• You're not emotionally able to handle a book about grief right now (come back to this when you are—this will really resonate when you can look back on it with a little distance)

(Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the eBook copy! All opinions are, of course, my own.)

I thought this was very good and I will have to add this to the shop shelves. Thank you for the chance for us to review.

This was interesting and unlike anything I've read before. I was confused throughout most of it, but had to continue reading once I started this strange story simply to find out how it would end. It's pretty fast paced and well written so I'm sure there's an audience who would appreciate it. Even though it wasn't really for me, I'd recommend it for someone who's open to unusual storytelling.

I received an advance review copy for free and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

While the premise was nice, the writing was... not what I expected. I wanted more from the characters because I felt that what was on the front cover and the front flap was not what we were given.

3.5/5

The many plots were quite hard to follow, but the complexity added to the story. It was very well written, it just took some dedication and focus that I don't often show to books that I read for "free reading"
This was a bit of a deterrent from reading it, so it took a long time to get into the book and actually continue reading it.
If you want something you need to focus on a lot that will still take you away into an incredible sci-fi world, then this is definitely a good choice.

Thank you, NatGalley and Melville House Publishing | Melville House for a free copy for review. This was a fun scifi debut about a mysterious tech company that doesn’t seem to DO anything, but maybe they actually invented time travel….. It was interesting to read how these 3 characters stories played out.

Jin Woo Chong’s Flux is a novel that takes a long long time to come into focus. Knowing that the book deals with time travel may help but possibly only with the even less coherent middle section.
Flux starts with three seemingly unconnected story lines. A man is sacked from his job at a popular magazine after a takeover and within a few minutes of that has met a girl, been given a job offer and falls down an elevator shaft. A young Korean-American boy called Bo is dealing with the death of his mother. And sometime in the future, a man called Blue is trying to get answers from another man called Lev about a company that offered boundless free energy but turned out to be a sham. In amongst this is a strange subplot centred around a 1980s police action program and its star. Chong does eventually bring all of these threads together in an time travel driven but emotional way but he takes what feels like a long time to get there.
Chong also plays fast and loose with his time travel premise. The rules of time travel (and there really need to be rules) are never clear. And he doesn’t even bother to explain or even lampshade this until the very end of the book:
“Read every book ever written with some hokey plotline like that, they’ll never agree. What you’re dealing with is an exercise of the imagination.”
The closest analogue to Flux is Charles Yu’s Interior Chinatown, in that Chong is using surreal styling and touchstones of popular culture to try and interrogate the Korean-American experience. But Flux relies too heavily on hand waved time travel mechanics full of bootstrap paradoxes and hints of predestination to carry a kind of moebius strip plot. An interesting experiment that does not quite land.

Flux is a complex sci-fi novel that hits so many different genres: speculative fiction, elements of cyberpunk and some neo-noir themes. The discovery of grief that is palpably woven throughout this story is wonderfully done. Also, it feels like the perfect read if you have recently gotten into the TV show Severance.

Flux by Jinwoo Chong is a wild mix of sci-fi, noir, and emotional storytelling that jumps between three different timelines. It follows Bo, an 8-year-old dealing with the loss of his mother; Brandon, a 28-year-old who just got laid off; and Blue, a 48-year-old caught up in a corporate scandal. Their stories connect in surprising ways, all tied to a mysterious tech company that seems to mess with time and memory. It’s got a bit of Severance vibes, with a deep dive into grief, nostalgia, and how our past shapes us.

Thank you to Netgalley and Melville House for the ARC of this novel.

Jinwoo Chong creates an emotional take on the time travel story. Young Brandon/Bo loses his mother in an accident that sets his life on a collision course with sadness. As an adult he loses his job, and is offered a new one shortly after, but when it seems too good to be true, he starts questioning his life so far.

At first this novel is confusing, there’s a lot going on, switches in POV, and story lines / timelines. But, throughout the novel, Brandon is fleshed out, his different thoughts and ideas throughout his life and time while disjointed culminate in a full character. The timeline settings and the near future / alternate now is intriguing and very possible in our timeline as well. The reader who will appreciate this novel is experienced and okay with being left in the dark throughout most of it, as well as okay with figuring some things out for yourself, as not much is clearly outlined. I did really enjoy this, especially because I felt like I needed to know what was really going on!

4/5 stars for sure.

This book is such an engrossing little gem. Following three primary narratives, the reader is acquainted with a man on the brink of collapse, a family torn apart, and a man revisiting a painful past. All of these narratives feature Raider, the onetime tv detective, in varying capacities.

There is something really special about this story. More than anything, it’s a sad story laced with a little something that just keeps you wanting to read more, to know more, to see something good come through for our narrators. In some ways, it becomes very clear what’s going on with the story, but it didn’t change how invested I was.

I loved the way that the different narratives were woven through and the different voices used throughout. Every time I picked it up to read, I found myself not wanting to put it down. It’s a story of complicated family dynamics and searching for that something that’s always just out of reach. This review has ended up a lot more vague than I intended, but I think that’s best. I really enjoyed reading this book, and the ending really hit so well for me.

This was a unique reading experience and I will definitely be looking into reading other works by the author. This was a really special little book for me.

3.5 stars..
Author Jinwoo Chong constructs a complex story set in three different time periods, throws in corporate shenanigans and time travel, as well as complicated family dynamics. At the same time, he keeps the pace moving along fast following Bo, Brandon and Blue (three Asian Americans), each in one of the time periods, who all experience shocking events in their lives. All three are connected by their deep love for an iconic 1980s detective show called Raider, whose main character was played by an Asian American, and whose life imploded, after revelations about his abused past before the show completed its run.

The story follows:

-Eight-year-old Bo and his young brother lose their mother in a horrific accident, and the family is scarred irreparably afterwards.

-Twenty eight-year-old Brandon loses his job at a magazine, and gets a new job at a tech startup. The startup's owner is a charismatic, beautiful, genius, and whose chief operating officer (COO) fascinates Brandon. Brandon is deeply puzzled by the startup's activities, and wonders why he keeps repeating certain actions while at work.

-Forty-eight-year-old Blue is implanted with a ridiculously expensive technology to allow him to speak again, in exchange for testifying against the former COO of the defunct tech startup.

I won't get into the time travel stuff, but it is important for creating the story's weird, loopy feel and for its denouement.

I loved all the references to the in-story tv show Raider, and its powerful effect on the psyches of Bo, Brandon and Blue.

Each time period is wonderfully drawn, with Chong gradually revealing details about Bo, Brandon and Blue. They're each hurting and never recovered from painful events in their lives, and suffer intense regret and difficulty connecting with others.

From that perspective, the story is tragic and moving. At the same time, it was a little difficult to connect with the narrative, because of the way the author initially dropped the reader into the lives of Bo, Brandon and Blue, eliciting some confusion. This did gradually resolve the further I read, and I began to gleefully notice the connections between the story threads, even while caring for the three main characters.

This is an inventive, fast-moving story, that also deals with bigotry and grief, and how these can derail lives.

Did I enjoy this book? Mostly. Chong kept me intrigued and reading till the end.

Thank you to Netgalley and to Melville House Publishing for this ARC in exchange for my review.

An interesting book with a unique plot and perspective on grief. I think this is going to be a book that either brings a lot of people in or pushes them away.

Thank you to Melville House Publishing and NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this book to review. I was immediately intrigued by the cover and simple title. I love a genre bending work as this also roped me into reading the book. The time jumping really worked for me as well as the discussion on race and prejudice. What really did not work for me personally was the character work. I did not bond with nor care for the characters at all. By the time the plot was picking up at about 70% into the book, I don’t feel we really were connecting with anybody on an emotional level or understood the true motivation of the main character. The climax of the entire plot line seemed rushed to me and like the author did not know how to really wrap up the story. I feel we could have done without some filler pages toward the beginning of the book, or benefitted from some extra development toward the 60% mark. By the time everything was happening, I felt very disconnected from the plot and characters as a whole. The premise really intrigued me, and I wanted to know how it would all play out, so I finished for the plot. If this would not have been gifted to me , I may not have ended up finishing. Solid three stars for the writing style, diversity, original ideas, and general feel. Would read work by this author again and look forward to it!

I received an ARC from the publisher in exchange for an honest review

Flux by Jinwoo Chong is a mixed third and first person multi-POV speculative novel. Brandon has recently lost his job after a hostile corporate takeover by Io, a woman who makes an awfully lot of claims about a technology she’s trying to develop. Meanwhile, we also see Bo, who lost his mother recently in a car accident, and Blue, who is in the middle of a high tech trial.

The speculative elements come into play a lot more in the back half of the book and it’s still more of a light touch than a harder sci-fi. I agree with the assessment that the novel is more of a mixture of genres as there is a kind of noir vibe going on when we see Raider in Bo’s POV and there’s the sci-fi twist in Blue’s POV. I really liked how these genres all mix together due to how they are connected to the themes and the three POVs.

I don’t feel like I can really talk about characters or plot without hitting on the big twist, so instead I’ll focus on the thing that captured my interest the most: the themes. Brandon is half-Korean and lost his connection to his Korean ancestry when his mother passed away. He stopped speaking the language, he makes mention of how American-Korean fusion food feels more and more authentic to him as lines continue to blur, and he deeply admires the character of Raider, who was an Asian detective on TV when he was a kid and the main representation the community had for years. Bo also has a complicated relationship with his Korean ancestry, though his is more linked to the character of Moto, who Raider takes in and raises after his parents die. Representation on its own is powerful, but Brandon has to wrestle with the messy legacy the actor behind Raider left behind.

As an immigrant who has had to deal with my own morals when it comes to separating the art from the artist, I understood why Brandon was talking specifically to Raider and not to the actor who played Raider and his desire to separate the two. That was his childhood hero. We’ve all heard the phrase ‘don’t meet your heroes,’ but what if your hero was a TV character who became your whole world after your mother died?

Content warning for mentions of racism

I would recommend this to fans of speculative fiction exploring themes of identity and what means to be in the diaspora and readers looking for books exploring separating the art from the artist