A Plagued Sea
by Kim Bo-Young
translated by Sophie Bowman
ARC Review
Publisher: Honford Star
Pub Date: August 11, 2026
What It's About
Muyoung is a bodyguard traveling with her young niece to Haewon, an isolated village on the Korean coast. Before the train leaves, disaster alerts start going off. There's been a massive earthquake offshore. They board anyway.
The earthquake wakes something old in the sea. A plague spreads through the village that changes people into something between human and fish. The government locks Haewon down, makes promises, and doesn't keep them. Muyoung stays, enforcing an isolation she doesn't believe in, while the people around her wait for help that never comes.
The novella comes out of a project where Korean SF writers reimagined the work of H.P. Lovecraft. This one takes on "The Shadow Over Innsmouth." You don't need to know the original to read it. But if you do, you'll notice that Kim takes a story built on fear of the outsider and turns it inside out.
What Stuck With Me
It is definitely a horror story. Body horror, sea monsters, an old god under the water. The book is also so sad. So many deaths, so much mourning.
Muyoung, responsible for a child who isn't hers, is making choices as a guardian, starting with the one at the train station. The book follows what that responsibility costs her. I read a lot of this novella with a knot in my chest.
The quarantine scenes were nightmares from not so many years ago. Shelter in place. Families separated with no way to reach each other. Officials who show up with clipboards instead of help. Kim wrote this in 2020. Anyone who lived through those years will recognize the shape of this fear, even with fins on it.
And the monsters are not who you think they are.
My Takeaway
This is a short book that does a lot. Grief, guilt, and a plague story that doubles as a pandemic story, inside a Lovecraft frame that Kim rebuilds as part of a larger project. The author's note is worth reading too.
Definitely worth the read.
Where to Buy
Bookshop.org | Amazon. | Libro.fm
Thank you to Honford Star and NetGalley for the advance copy. All opinions are my own.
