Luminous

Luminous (publication day March 11, 2025) by Silvia Park, starts out slowly, but as it picked up speed I was enthralled. Set in a hypothetically reunified Korea, robots have become ubiquitous, so much so that the police have a “robot crimes” unit to investigate crimes against robots. Jun is a detective assigned to the robot crimes unit. He was once a soldier in the “bloodless” unification war and, due to an encounter with an IED that damaged nearly 80% of his body, is mostly bionic. He’s also trans, and the child of a famous roboticist who brought one of his creations home to be a brother for his two children.

Jun’s sister, Morgan, works for Imagine Friends, one of the leading companies designing robots, and the company is about to reveal its newest model, Morgan being one of its primary architects. His name is Yoyo, after Morgan and Jun’s robot brother, who just disappeared one day. Morgan also lives with another robot she created–Stephen–who is supposed to be her boyfriend, but they haven’t done anything beyond friendship yet.

Jun hasn’t talked to Morgan for five years, but he’s investigating a missing robot who belongs to one of Morgan’s neighbors. It’s an older model, a child really, and Morgan’s robot, Stephen, had been friends with the missing robot.

Meanwhile, a group of kids in summer school hang out at a junkyard next door after school and meet a robot not like any other, whose name is Yoyo. One girl has a bionic suit because of her illness, and another, who is from the north and lives for playing soccer, also lives with his uncle, who salvages robots and their parts. Of course, as in all good novels, all of the characters come together at the end.

I really enjoyed it–it will give book groups much to discuss. There are some similarities with Klara and the Sun, but it is truly its own novel. I will call it weight-neutral, as there were few descriptions of body size or shape.