Project V
by Park Seolyeon
Translated from the Korean by Gene Png
Where to Purchase: Bookshop.org | Amazon
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Audiobook Narrated by Jo Yuan
Publisher: HarperVia also mentioned HarperAudio Adult
Publication Date: April 28, 2026
What It's About
Project V is the latest Park Seolyeon novel to arrive in English, and if A Magical Girl Retires was her feminist fantasy, this one is her feminist science fiction.
Robotics prodigy Kim Wooram is one of the best mecha pilots and engineers in the world. When a secret government project launches a reality competition show to find the pilot for Korea's most advanced robot, she's ready. There's just one problem: only men can apply. Encouraged by her twin brother Boram, Wooram disguises herself as him and enters anyway.
What follows is part competition drama, part identity thriller, part social commentary. As Wooram rises through the ranks, winning fans, making unexpected friends, and butting heads with the show's power-hungry heir apparent, she begins to realize that the robot at the center of it all, V, is more than a machine. Its arrogant AI is evolving, and not in the direction the men in charge intended.
Translated from the Korean by Gene Png, a Seoul-based literary translator and illustrator from Singapore who won the Grand Prize in Poetry at the 53rd Korea Times' Modern Korean Literature Translation Awards, the prose reads fast and clean.
What Stuck With Me
Wooram is not just smart. She is sharp and emotionally intelligent in a way that extends even to her interactions with an AI. While the men around her treat V as a tool to be controlled, Wooram approaches it the way she approaches most things: with curiosity and patience, and a willingness to actually listen. The real problem in this story is not the AI. It is what happens when the people in power refuse to hear the person who understands the situation best, simply because she is a woman.
The AI storyline could have gone full dystopian, but Park Seolyeon takes it somewhere more interesting. We do not need to fear AI so much as we need to pay attention to the human systems that govern it. V is not the ticking time bomb. The unchecked egos of the men running the project are. Wooram sees the solution. She is just not allowed in the room.
The reality TV competition format works especially well here. Survival shows and idol competitions are a fixture of modern television, and Park uses the format to look at parasocial fandom, the performance of identity, and the way women are evaluated even in spaces that are supposed to be about skill.
I read the book first, then listened, and the audiobook held up on its own. Narrator Jo Yuan is well suited to the material. Her voice is grounded and focused, with a youthful tone that fits Wooram well. If you have the option, it is worth trying.
My Takeaway
Project V is a girl power book with real conviction behind it. Park Seolyeon writes with a lightness that keeps the story moving, but the moral weight underneath never disappears. Girls can do anything boys can do, and as in Wooram's case, probably better. The world just has to catch up.
I kept thinking this would work beautifully as an animated film. The mecha visuals, the competition drama, the emotional core are all there. Someone please make this happen.
If you loved A Magical Girl Retires, this is an easy next read. The two books share the same energy, just in very different worlds: one magical, one technological. And if the AI thread is what interests you, Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro is a good companion read. Two very different takes on the intelligent beings we create, and what they might need from us.
Where to Purchase
All books mentioned also available on my storefront.
I received a complimentary copy of the print book and audiobook from HarperVia via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.
