The Floating World

Gr 8 Up–The Korean folktale “The Woodcutter and the Celestial Maiden” meets a high-tech fantasy world powered by mithril. Ren, 16, is an impetuous acrobat with dangerous light magic. She should be keeping her magic hidden but can’t help using it to aid herself and her adopted family as they travel to perform. When a demon attacks the village they’re in, Ren uses her power to kill it and sets off into the mountains to confront the demon’s origins and her own past. In the Under World, Sunho is an amnesiac ex-soldier taking odd jobs to raise enough money to go find his older brother and answers about what happened to him. He takes a mercenary job that could solve his problems—hunting a girl wielding silver light. Their alternating points of view eventually collide without Sunho realizing Ren is the one he’s hunting. Oh’s immersive worldbuilding is deep and easily digestible with scattered exposition balancing the fast-moving plot. The Under World beneath the Floating World is cloaked in darkness, with poisonous clouds and the city above keeping the districts in shadow—a concept both high in stakes and full of symbolism. Multiple mysteries keep the tension ever rising, making up for Sunho and Ren’s somewhat stagnant emotional entanglements. Characters are coded Korean with additional diversity in the extended cast.