Summary:
In a country called Town, a doctor named Su is found dead in an abandoned car. There is only one place the police intend to look for her killer: the Saha Estates. Town is the safest, richest nation in the world. But it is a society clearly divided into the haves and have-nots, and those who have the very least - who aren't even considered citizens - live on the Saha Estates. No one is shocked when a lowlife Saha like Do-kyung becomes the main suspect in Su's - a citizen's - murder. But then Do-kyung disappears, and his sister Jin-kyung is determined to find him. To do so, she must rely on her tightlipped neighbors, from a mysterious janitor to a reluctant midwife and an unwitting test subject at the local clinic.
My Thoughts:
I have never read a book quite like this before. It's part murder mystery, part what is the government hiding from us. The people native to the land were not given citizenship when the country was taken over, banishing them to the outskirts to live in an abandoned building. They are treated like dirt, and most cannot get jobs because most jobs require citizenship. The city is run by the Council of Ministers, whose faces are never seen by the public, and crimes are punished often by execution.
The novel is split into narratives by many different Saha residents, which accumulates into the information Jin-kyung needs to find her brother and try to save him from a crime he didn't actually commit. But what Jin-kyung is told at the end turns everything she thought she knew on its head.
I liked the way this book was written, and I was surprised at the reveal, but it kind of left more questions than answers for me. Thus, I still don't know how to feel about it. I liked the different stories of the different characters and how they blended together to push the plot forward though. I think that was very well done.
My Rating: 3 stars
