This was…cute.
That’s not really what I was expecting when I cracked open this Korean YA novel that’s been billed, somewhat stereotypically, as The Hunger Games meet Squid Game. Really, it’s more like Snowpiercer meets Mean Girls meets The Parent Trap. Korean teen Chobahm lives in one of many tiny villages dotted around a future Earth deep in the throes of an ice age with her twin brother, mother, and senile grandmother. All of them, and most of the survivors of the freeze, work hard running in human hamster wheels that collectively bank enough energy to provide heat for greenhouses, light for tiny homes…and power for the TVs that broadcast Snowglobe.
Snowglobe is the only safe, warm place left on the planet, a thermally heated dome where the inhabitants are given every creature comfort imaginable in exchange for having their opulent, dramatic lives broadcast 24/7 to the frozen masses outside in a constant reality show loop. Chobahm dreams of becoming a storyline director, and when she’s asked to stand in for an actress she resembles, she finally sees her way in. But Snowglobe is not what it seems, and Chobahm is faced with the choice to reveal the shocking truth or lay back in the lap of luxury.
Sound familiar? It should. This is basically a mashup of every teen dystopia, school drama, and performing arts school movie ever, with a few details from adult ones thrown in for good measure. It’s all told in a way that’s much more light and frothy than suspenseful and exciting, to be honest, and there are a LOT of gaping plot holes and things that don’t make a lot of sense when you think about them for more than five minutes. This annoyed me until I realized that Snowglobe is a rarity–a YA novel that is actually written for young teens and pre-teens rather than horny grown women. If I was 12, I’d have sucked this down in one sitting after school, gasped at all the right places, enjoyed the obligatory romance, and ignored the gaping plot holes long enough to pre-order the sequel.
But I’m middle-aged, so I was mostly just like ‘meh’ until I realized this book wasn’t written for me, got over it, and started thinking of a young person I can gift a copy of this to. It would make a cute Disney drama. I can’t be mad at that.
One salty note remains though; I read this in English and while I haven’t seen a copy of the Korean text yet I have my suspicions that this translation isn’t that great. It does the job, but there are a few ‘huh?’ moments where the vocabulary suddenly feels mismatched or somebody’s grandma starts speaking in slang for no reason.
Down parkas and truth bombs to Snowglobe.
(Beautiful people! Sometimes a book is #notmygenre, sometimes it’s just #notmybook, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t good! If this sounded interesting to you, don’t let my ambivalence stop you–find it, and many others like it, in the Equal Opportunity Bookshop. Full disclosure–if you buy anything at that link, or any other link you find on this page, we get paid a commission that goes towards furthering bookish diversity. By ‘we’, I mean me, and by ‘furthering bookish diversity’, I mean buying more books to read and paying for this site so I can review into the void that is the post-content-creator internet. Cynicism aside, I appreciate you being here and reading this! Go read something good today, and peace!)
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