The God and the Gwisin The much anticipated, page-turning sequel to The God and the Gumiho

4 / 5 stars

Aila aus Zürich am 29.05.2025
Bewertungsnummer: 2502274
Bewertet: Buch (Taschenbuch)

This was good. Not quite as good as «The God and the Gumiho», but still good. When I finished that first book in this (presumably) duology, I was bawling. I was also really looking forward to the sequel, while also dreading it somewhat. Mainly because I loved the dynamic between Seokga and Hani in the first book and was not all that confident that Sophie Kim would be able to recapture as incredible a dynamic between Seokga and whoever Hani’s soul reincarnated into. And my doubts were kinda right. The dynamic between Seokga and Kisa is very different from his dynamic with Hani, but it still works. Just not quite as perfectly as before. Ultimately, Seokga and Kisa are still really sweet and loveable together, and I’m jealous that they get to live in a cozy cottage in a magical library. Oh and the plot was good too I guess. I mean the plot was once again centred around a case Seokga (and Kisa) had to investigate, just like in the first book. This time I guessed who the killer was pretty much immediately, which was not the case in the first book, but that didn't detract from the reading experience for me. I don't really have much else to say about this, since the detective case is very much just a background story, with the main story being the relationship between Kisa and Seokga. I think I slightly preferred the case in the first book, but not by much. Lastly, I think it would've really helped to have a pronunciation guide somewhere in the book. These often annoy me in Fantasy books because ultimately it doesn't really matter if some made-up fantasy name is mispronounced, and also the 'phonetic' spellings used are quite confusing for a non-native English speaker (especially the vowels). However, since the 'fantasy words' in this are actual real names of entities in Korean mythology/folklore, I would've loved a pronunciation guide. I read the first book as an audiobook, so I knew that the <s> in 'eoduksini' and 'gwisin' is pronounced more like an English <sh> than an English <s>, but loads of other words I'd never heard before.