"A Plagued Sea" by Bo-young Kim (tr. Sophie Bowman) [Lovecraft Reanimated project] > Likes and Comments
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.Discussion entries for the other stories in the "Lovecraft Reanimated" project:
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ALIEN GODS
by Suhyeon Lee
(tr. Anton Hur)
HERE: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...
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THE CALL OF THE FRIEND
by Jaehoon Choi
(tr. Janet Hong)
HERE: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...
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COME DOWN TO A LOWER PLACE
by Seoyoung Yi
(tr. Janet Hong)
HERE: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...
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Some things I can say about Sophie Bowman, translator of "A Plagued Sea":She is British (white), married to a Korean man (who is not one of the "gyopo" type).
In the 2010s, Sophie Bowman had some association with this Club. She was even was discussion-leader a time or two! Several people associated with the Club today know her somewhat.
It seems Bo-young Kim likes and trusts Sophie Bowman's translations. This was not the first story by Bo-young Kim she's translated.
Having read some of her translations in the old "Bilingual Editions" series, I have long felt Sophie Bowman is a good translator. She did a good job rendering the stories enjoyably and coherently.
Sophie Bowman was the kind of person who got into Korean-to-English translation back in the "old days" (mid-2010s or earlier). A similar story, in at least some key ways, to Deborah Smith.
Deborah Smith was an early-2010s dilettante-turned-huge-success who walked into fame when her translation of Han Kang got a prize in 2016.
Whereas Deborah Smith has been off the 'Korea' scene a long time now (at least word, she is in the Himalayan foothills), Sophie Bowman remains. Although I believe she may be in the UK now herself.
The "Plagued Sea" has just been released with some fanfare. We'll see how much more attention (reads) it gets than the other three Lovecraft-series books. It's likely to get a lot more, due to the tie-in with the U.S. publisher!
I'm not surprised that
A Plagued Sea
has already gotten 10x the GR ratings/reviews of
Alien Gods
and
Come Down to a Lower Place
, the other two stories in the Lovecraft series. And this just a few weeks after Plagued Sea's August 2026 release, while the other two in the Lovecraft series were released already in December 2025.That's what a big distribution-deal gets. The U.S. publisher Tor, in this case. Who can say what the ratio will be in a few months' time. It'll likely be considerably higher still than 10x, as new people are coming on steadily to "Plagued Sea" while the others have dead-ended (on GR, an imperfect but indicative measure). The vectors-of-influence on people's reading choices are already locked in.
This is the GR engagement info, at this time of writing, for the three Lovecraftian Korean stories:
"A Plagued Sea," by Bo-young Kim (tr. Sophie Bowman) (orig. March 2020; tr. pub. Aug. 2026) [released in US market by TOR]
- 943 ratings / 3.63 avg.
- 453 reviews
- 70 list it as "currently reading"
- GR reviews published, past three days: 11
"Alien Gods," by Suhyeon Lee (tr. Anton Hur) (orig. March 2020; tr. pub. Dec. 2025) [NOT released in US market]
- 136 ratings / 3.49 avg.
- 39 reviews
- 2 list it as "currently reading"
- GR reviews published, past three months: 3
"Come Down to a Lower Place," by Seoyoung Yi (tr. Janet Hong) (orig. March 2020; tr. pub. Dec. 2025) [NOT released in US market]
- 81 ratings / 3.62 avg.
- 28 reviews
- 1 lists it as "currently reading"
- GR reviews published, past three months: 5
Update:"Plagued Sea" is now up to 1,133 ratings and 497 written reviews (average rating @ 3.61),
So it's getting as high as 85 new ratings per day, at about the +1-month mark after its publication. People say that for recently published, general-release, Western-oriented books, you can apply a 100x multiplier to get to a rough estimate of Total Readers. Judged on that standard, "Plagued Sea" is now probably into "100,000+ reader" territory with no signs of slowing down. It could very plausibly make it into the "1,000,000+ readers" territory in 2027.
So this story and its translation by Sophie Bowman (a one-time friend of this Club, btw) will have disproportionate influence on perceptions of Korean Literature's in the West.
Korean literature-in-translation super-reviewer Paul Fulcher gave "Plagued Sea" a 4/5 rating. He is a notoriously strict rater, giving a 5/5 rating about 3.5% of the time. So a 4/5 is a solid recommendation from our planet's most-prolific reviewer over Korean fiction-in-translation.
My 5/5 for newer books is 8% - I fit my end of year ratings to 8%/47%/31%/12%/2% for 5/4/3/2/1 stars. That's a bit influenced by the GR normal approach where 3 is seen as 'bad' - pre GR I used to average 3 and give 5 to 1-2 books a year.
That's a good system, Paul.This Club's in-person attendees do their own ratings of books at each session, on a 10-point scale. The aggregated range has been 5.5 to 8.2.
There are a lot of biases in this system. For one, people who really didn't like books won't show up. For some reason, many/most people are very reluctant to give rantings below 5 or 6 even when disliking a book quite much.
Now Goodreads allows half and quarter scores will be interesting to see if that causes grade inflation or deflation
We recently took interest in Honford Star's "Lovecraft Reanimated" project.
There was a book-launch event on December 13, 2025 in Seoul (see here for event report: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/... ).
This thread will be for comments related to this book:
More comments (I hope) to follow, on this book, A Plagued Sea, by anyone who wants to.
See also, GR page on "Genre: Lovecraftian" at: https://www.goodreads.com/genres/love...
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