The Book of Taba
by Seon Jung
A raw, ambitious debut full of chaotic fights, found family, and very real father issues.
ARC Review - Post release
This one reads like an anime-action-RPG fever dream dropped into a soul-powered apocalypse, messy, ambitious, and surprisingly heartfelt.
What It’s About:
Taba and his friends, Queenie and Hush, are trying to survive in a world where every decision drains your soul. Literally. Using a system of yes/no questions, Taba can see paths forward, but it costs him every time. After a mission gone wrong, the trio is captured by the powerful gatekeepers of the city of Malapace and forced into a new kind of test: one of loyalty, strength, and who they’re willing to protect.
What Worked for Me:
There’s so much energy in this story. It’s raw, chaotic, a little clunky, but it has real ideas and characters I actually cared about. The soul economy system is fascinating (what if asking a question cost you life force?), and I loved how it created pressure in scenes that otherwise might’ve just been filler.
Queenie totally worked for me,.. fierce, impulsive, quietly vulnerable. Hush, too, had more depth than I expected. The whole “found family built from survival” arc hit a lot of good notes. And the Juliette fox character? Definitely a gumiho-coded trickstert, or at the very least a kitsune-style test figure, and probably my favorite part of the book. She’s terrifying in the way old spirits are terrifying, elegant, drunk, and probably bored with mortals.
What Didn’t Work:
This is a debut that needed an editor. There are typos, formatting issues, and some sections that could be cut entirely (still not sure what the mutant elephant was doing there). Easily a third of the book could be trimmed without losing anything important.
One stylistic habit that got in the way: the overuse of mid-word cutoffs (“Wair enou–” or “He’s bli–”). When used sparingly, that kind of interruption can build tension, but here, it just became distracting.
Still, these are small points in the overall scheme of things. It’s hard to hold them against a debut indie project with this much heart. Seon Jung clearly had a vision, and even if not all of it lands, I respected the ambition.
Would I Keep Reading?
Yeah, I think I would, especially if book 2 tightens up. There’s a world here I’d like to see evolve. And I want to see what happens with Father, with Juliette, and with Queenie’s arc.
A Final Note:
This is clearly a self-published debut by a young author with a vision. If you’re the kind of reader who likes to support indie creators early, especially ones from underrepresented backgrounds, I hope you’ll give this a shot. It’s not perfect, but there’s something here. And if Seon Jung keeps writing, I think it’ll only get better.
Thank you to the author and Voracious Readers Only for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.
How to find it.
Buy on Amazon (Available through Kindle Unlimited)
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Details:
Format: Digital ARC
Publisher: Self-published
Author: Seon Jung
Expected Series: Book 1 of ???
Read via: Voracious Readers copy
Release: 2025
