Book Review: Sublimation by Isabel J. Kim

This is an astounding bit of high-concept sci-fi. Imagine a world where crossing a border literally split your body in two. A young woman emigrates from South Korea - one version of her stays in Seoul, another version goes off to live in New York. This is the way humanity has always existed. People bifurcating and dealing with the consequences.

It is heady stuff. The book spans life, love, politics, religion, and folklore. It layers on narrative and meta-narrative. Like any debut novel, there are too many ideas to be contained and the plot seems to spill beyond its pages. What would the fascist ICE do with immigrants who were mere clones of the people they left behind?

The dizzying implications of the story are matched only by the gorgeously intricate plot. Does the tale need to occasionally be told in the second-person? You don't think so, but you also can't think of a better way to illustrate how strange it is to argue with your other-self. You enjoy all the literary and scholarly references and find they add poetic texture to balance out the increasing tension.

Unlike other hard sci-fi, it doesn't spend too much time on exposition; it gets drip fed to the reader. But it is happy to dive into the practicalities of a world where refugees might leave behind more than just memories. There's a small but necessary amount of technobabble, and a large but necessary amount of moral philosophising. Tuvix did not die in vain.

Sublimation lives up to the hype. It is dramatic, powerful, intriguing, and - above all - fun.

Many thanks to NetGalley for the review copy. Sublimation is available to pre-order now for delivery in July. I recommend reading it twice.