A review by morebedsidebooks
To the Warm Horizon by Jin-Young Choi

inspiring sad tense

4.0

 
Everyone was bad. Everyone who didn’t die, who survived, who couldn’t help but continue to live like this, was bad. If we survived, if we somehow survived these horrors, we shouldn’t be this way. It was possible for us not to be this way. Why were we ruining it? Why were we making life harder?

 

To the Warm Horizon by Choi Jin-Young imagines the aftermath of an immensely deadly pandemic throwing the world into chaos and the violence that also runs rampant. Published originally in 2017 but translated to English by Soje in 2021, this is a book that faces a reception influenced not just by different cultures, countries, and languages but the before. The world it was written in and the world it later enters. Dystopian, increased disparities, misinformation, disinformation, malinformation, and conspiracy theories, extreme false cures, dangerous violent creeds, war—all the desensitization and normalized death and suffering are familiar. 

A sullen book filled with what people lose and leave, while trying to show something that humans can find and still hold onto. In this case love. How does this in different forms warp, survive, and inform action when there are so many devastating circumstances and instances of people being awful. The need to show love to oneself. The kindred relationships that can buckle or persist. And especially queer love. A wlw love story is in there too. One of a few now available novels with LGBTQ+ characters from South Korea. 

So, is there also a takeaway from the several different characters and their perspectives? One might hope for the relief found by Gunji, the realizations of Ryu, the kindness and resilience of Jina, the purpose and strength of Dori, and in thinking up new dreams like Joy. In a world where “There’s no such thing as never going to happen.” people can hold on. 
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