The Bookish Mindset

Overview:

Title: Luminous
Author: Silvia Park
Published: March 2025
Genre: Sci-Fi, Dystopian
Themes: Family, Robots and Androids

One sentence summary: Set in a new Korea where robots live among us as family and in our workplaces and can help to further life with robotic replacements too. 

One sentence review: An interesting mix of genres as a sci-fi/dystopian that read very literary, definitely for fans of Klara and the Sun.

Review:

Set in a new Korea where robots live among us as family and in our workplaces. Humans can be saved and helped to further life with robotic replacements too. 

We follow the lives of a set of siblings and their impacts on the world. One a soldier, his life saved but robotic replacements and now working in a police department investigation missing robots. Another is the brains behind the newest models on sale to the public. 

Neither of them truly have dealt with the pain of loosing their robotic brother in childhood, but unknown to them, he’s lived many lives since them. 

This was a really interestingly delivered story. While it’s being marketed as a literary, it also falls into the category of dystopian/sci-fi because of its setting and the questions it’s asking. There’s not many (if any) books that I’ve read that are at a true intersection of genres like this and it made for very different read.

You can expect lots of character focus, with multiple POV’s and multiple storylines that take time to mature before they begin to converge. 

We also have lots of moral questions about what is real and the depth of feeling robots have and how those with bionic placements fit into society.

The whole book had me intrigued and while I’ve read that fans of Klara and the Sun will enjoy this, I wasn’t a massive fan of Klara (sorry) but this I did find myself coming back to. 

If reading more is something that you’re looking at doing this year then should check my reading challenge out here! Read nine books from nine prompts over the first six months of the year and be entered into a draw to win a bundle of bookish goodies.

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And don’t forget to check out my other blogs and reviews – you can find books with similar themes in the same folder link below, or click back onto blogs to see the whole offering.

Last updated 16/05/2025