A review by angiegladden
City of Ash and Red by Pyun Hye-young

3.0

This was an interesting book to read during our own quarantine days. The story was really dark with several graphic and disturbing scenes. Not one I’d recommend to everyone, but interesting nonetheless.

Some of my favorite quotes...

“This despair at knowing he would never make his way back weighed heavily on him. And he grew unhappy at the thought that he might never again run his fingers along the fine grain of ordinary everyday life.”

“The biggest impact the epidemic had on people was not infection and death but rather suspicion of others for fear of exactly that. Every person except for themselves was a potential pathogen, and every place outside of their own homes was dirty beyond belief and had viruses floating in the air.”

“Fear and rumors and viruses shared a similar nature. They bore a tremendous vitality of their own, oblivious to human efforts to stamp them out. They could spread rapidly even while offering no clue to their routes of transmission. And they would burn for a long, long time, like dry grassland, only to vanish in an instant as if doused with water.”