Memoir of a Joseon Bride Review
Korean Horror That Goes Everywhere
by Djuna
translated by Adrian Thieret, Jihyun Park, and Gord Sellar
ARC Review
Honford Star
Publication date: September 30, 2026
I had so much fun reading Memoir of a Joseon Bride.
The collection moves through horror, science fiction, history, monsters, vampires, aliens, zombies, and some ideas I would not even know how to categorize. And somehow, it all works.
Content note: violence, sexual abuse, incest, body horror, and death.
A Collection That Keeps Changing
The stories are very different from one another, which ended up being one of my favorite things about the book.
The title story was a standout for me. I already loved the Joseon setting, and then Djuna added vampires. The premise was fantastic.
“Under the Sphinx” was another favorite, with a completely fabricated bit of IMDb history that takes on a life of its own.
There are also stories involving memory transfer, aliens, space travel, and monsters.
Then there is the final story. It starts somewhere genuinely awful and eventually involves a dead man who refuses to stay dead, a shaman, an old Joseon-era body, a talisman, and a zombie problem that gets much, much bigger.
That story probably captures what I enjoyed about the collection as a whole. Djuna can start with one strange idea and keep pushing it until it becomes something I never would have expected.
Korean History Is Part of the Story
The collection also felt very Korean to me, and not simply because the stories are set in Korea.
The history and culture actually affect how the stories work.
The Joseon period is part of the horror in the title story. Shamans and folklore become part of the logic of other stories. Even something as specific as the history of Korean standard time gets worked into a zombie story.
The Translation
For stories with such unusual premises, the writing is very straightforward. Nothing felt vague, and even when what was happening was completely bizarre, I always knew what was going on.
Adrian Thieret, Jihyun Park, and Gord Sellar translated the collection, and nothing felt awkward to me. What I noticed most was that the humor worked. The punchlines landed when they needed to. That was especially important in a collection that can move very quickly from something disturbing to something completely absurd.
If you like horror, Korean literature, strange speculative fiction, or short stories that are willing to go completely off the rails, there is a lot here to appreciate here.
I really enjoyed this one.
Definitely worth the read.
I received an advance copy of Memoir of a Joseon Bride through NetGalley. Opinions are my own.
Where to Purchase
You may also like
Cursed Bunny by Bora Chung, translated by Anton Hur
For another Korean short-story collection that mixes horror, speculative fiction, body horror, absurdity, and ideas that refuse to stay in one genre.
With the Heart of a Ghost by Lim Sunwoo, translated by Chi-Young Kim
For more Korean speculative short stories that move between the strange, unsettling, and surreal.
Come Down to a Lower Place by Yi Seoyoung, translated by Janet Hong
For readers who want to stay with Korean horror and see history, folklore, and grotesque imagery used as part of the horror itself.
