James Nicoll Reviews

Bora Chung’s 2019 Red Sword is a stand-alone science fiction novel. Anton Hur’s English translation was published in 2025.

The prisoner is just one of many prisoners destined for a world the Imperials covet. Along with her fellow prisoners, she is forced out onto the foggy surface of the alien world. Many discoveries await, not least of which is how easy it is to die on this planet.

The Imperials, their soldiers, scientists, and prisoners are not the only beings claiming the planet for their own. The ​“white monsters,” as the Imperials call their enemy, also claim the world. The Imperials do not share. Neither do the white monsters. Therefore, one or the other has to go.

A human wave of prisoners, including the woman, are sent out to confront the white monsters. The prisoners are ostensibly unarmed, although some (like the woman) have primitive weapons such as swords. The white monsters have powerful beam weapons. The prisoners die in droves… but somehow the woman survives.

The woman is determined to survive. The enemy will kill her if they can. The woman’s masters seem only marginally less hostile to their own forces than the enemy. The woman does have allies amongst her fellow prisoners (temporary allies, as their lifespans are usually short).

Her circumstances leave little room for introspection, but the woman does have one pressing question beyond how to survive. How is it that she keeps encountering people she knows to be dead?

~oOo~

I’ve had Chung on my radar for a while. This may not have been the best jumping-on point, unless Chung’s other books are somehow even more relentlessly depressing.

The unnamed planet is perpetually shrouded in mist. This appears to be one of those metaphor things, the mist providing a literal fog of war. The details of the planet don’t really stand up to close examination… but nobody promised this would be hard SF.

As a presentation of what it’s like to be an expendable cog in a malevolent empire, the novel is quite effective. I’ve previously complained how SFnal autocracies are so often logical and efficient AND evil. That is very much not the case here. Not only are the Imperials counter-productively, destructively inefficient in pursuit of their nebulous goals, they are aware of this and seemingly pleased by their actions. It’s a display of raw power to compel people to obey directives everyone knows are stupid and pointless. It’s also a display of power to squander resources for the glee of denying them to other people.

So, this is an extremely timely novel. Chung’s short work is skillfully executed, the protagonist an effective Charon across this particular hell. It’s not an especially upbeat or heartening work… but again, nobody promised that it would be.

Red Sword is available here (Honford Star), here (Barnes & Noble), here (Bookshop UK), here (Chapters-Indigo), and here (Words Worth Books).

I did not find Red Sword at Bookshop US. USA delenda est.