A review by sarahmuncy
Ocean's Godori by Elaine U. Cho

adventurous emotional funny hopeful lighthearted fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.5

Thank you to Zando and Net Galley for the eARC in exchange for an honest review.

Space operas and I have a strange relationship. I love them, but often find myself disappointed by the them. Whether it’s problems with the way the female characters are written, or the pretty blatant ableism the genre can perpetuate, they often just aren’t up to scratch.

That isn’t the case with this one, though. Elaine U. Cho has created something truly epic with Ocean’s Godori. The story is rich and colorful and the characters are full of life.

1: The Plot

Ocean Yoon is a Korean pilot who works for the Alliance, Korea’s space agency. Despite her talent, she’s currently flying a Class 4 ship after shooting someone against orders. When her friend Teo is accused of murdering his parents, Ocean and her crew become caught up in the conflict. 

2: Narrative, Prose, and Story

The choice to throw the readers into the thick of things with very little up front exposition was the right one. Cho is masterful at weaving exposition into the right places without infodumping on the reader.

With unique sci-fi names, I sometimes have trouble keeping up with who’s who. Luckily, Cho was able to introduce characters well and switch POVs often enough that I wasn’t left confused, but not so often that the narrative felt choppy.

The fast pacing made this an easy read. I had no trouble getting into and keeping up with the story.

Ocean, Teo, and Haven are all great characters who are interesting and feel real. They make excellent POV characters for a well-rounded story as they’re all quite different and have their own perspectives and motivations. It was a delight to get to know them and realize I would die for them. 

3: The Romance

This space opera is quite heavy on the romance, which is great for me because I love a good romance. However, if that’s not what you enjoy, I’d recommend something else.

There are two main pairings, Haven and Ocean (Gemini, my guy, I love you, but BACK OFF), and Phoenix and Teo. They both mean the world to me. Neither are weird or feel forced. I think they’re really well done. I’m rooting for them!

4: Characters

As usual with my reviews, I’m only going to talk about the characters and dynamics I have something to say about.

Ocean’s captain is Dae Song, my nemesis, who I’m really hoping we get both a decent amount of backstory and a character arc from. She’s difficult and selfish, but I think there’s a lot of room for her to grow.

Phoenix is a criminal with a heart of gold who ends up helping them. Yeah, his character is totally unrealistic. But do I care? Absolutely not. I love him.

Ocean and Teo’s friendship is so adorable. They’re cute and codependent, and I love them for that.

While I loved everything I saw from all the characters, I felt like we only scratched the surface of all of them. So, I’m hoping we spend enough time with them in later books.

5: Other Notes

As is often the case with softer space operas when compared to harder sci-fi, the science wasn’t quite there. The novel has the aesthetics of sci-fi without the pseudoscientific explanations. The world feels real, but most of the technology isn’t explained to us. 

Mixing Romaja with English text was a bad idea. It’s just usually a bad idea to mix multiple languages like that, especially if you’re not including any kind of footnotes. Readers who don’t know Korean will either have to stop to look up the words (annoying, and they aren’t even written in Hangul so they won’t automatically translate) or ignore the text entirely (meaning readers are missing dialogue). There is a glossary at the back of the book, but personally, I’d recommend switching to footnotes.

Colonialism, capitalism, and identity aren’t explored much in this novel. But, most of this first book is set up for what I assume will be a series of 3-5 books (though, I couldn’t find anything saying how many there’d be), so I expect those themes to play a larger role later.

5: Conclusion

This novel was definitely exceptional for a debut. I can tell that Cho is going to kick ass in this genre. I can’t wait for the next one!

★★★★★ (4.5/5)