James Nicoll Reviews

Park Seolyeon’s 2023 Project V is a stand-alone mecha-oriented science fiction novel. The 2026 English translation is by Gene Png.

No artifact represents national technological prowess quite like immensely tall, humanoid mecha. Thus the 2037 fad for building immensely tall, humanoid mecha.

Project V is South Korea’s grand mecha project. Kim Wooram, runner-up at the World Gigantic Mechanics Olympiad, is a logical choice for its pilot…. if only Wooram weren’t a girl.

Unforced sexism is not Project V’s only issue. It’s just the one that affects Wooram most personally.

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Park Seolyeon’s 2022 A Magical Girl Retires is a modern fantasy. The 2024 English translation is by Anton Hur.

Jobless, three million won¹ in debt, her dream of becoming a clock repair person dead, now alone in the world, an unnamed twenty-nine-year-old Korean woman resolves to kill herself, ideally in a manner that will inconvenience as few people as possible. Before she can steel herself up to hurl herself from a bridge, Clairvoyant Magical Girl Ah Roa appears in a cab to forestall the twenty-nine-year-old.

The twenty-nine-year-old is not the hapless loser she believes she is. She is a Magical Girl. Rather than being a burden the world would be better off without, the twenty-nine-year-old may be its savior.

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