The Plotters

This book was extremely not my thing, but I sunken cost fallacied myself into finishing it. I guess it was fine but I don't care about assassins and the description I read talked about a like trio of weird female assassins that just didn't really happen at all. There were some entertaining Murakami-esque quirks (cat names, weird prodigious/precocious women), but a lot of the book was monologue philosophizing about the meaning of life and death, and not in any sort of groundbreaking or ingenious way.

It was ok - not really my style of book. The summary I read that led me to pick the book was misleading. I should have read the goodreads summary instead - it was much more on target.

The fight scenes are ballet in this philosophical noir thriller. The first chapter on its own is a perfectly crafted short story.

Would make one hell of a TV script with Reseng, our protagonist torn between the old world of trained career assassins, the back-alley, anything for a buck world of the Meat Market and the slick, MBA having, Stanford educated Hanja and his corporate supermarket of death. The host of eclectic characters from the soft-hearted but bear-sized owner of the pet crematorium, the cross-eyed, knitting librarian, the non-stop talking convenience store owner and her wheelchair bound sister. The action is done well and the story moves but I guess I like a bit more flourish in my writing. The translation is serviceable but I have a Western appetite for wordy flourishes on the page and the need for some authorial pyrotechnics. It's a question of activist versus originalist translations explored a bit more here: https://youtu.be/rKmkhWh_vzY

Korean librarian assassins, some knitting. Worth four stars just for those things.