Love this book with all the powerful characters. Am sure, it is going to be a treat for Min Jin Lee's Pachinko fans. I loved the book cover and how the author decided to have a tiger on the cover representing Korea. Beautiful.

This book was painfully beautiful. From page one to the very end, I couldn’t read it fast enough. If you liked Pachinko, you will like Beasts of a Little Land.

Wandering, blinded by starvation and the snow, a hunter finds himself to be hunted. A tigerling tracked him. After collapsing, near his end, a Japanese nobleman and soldier, who himself is lost finds him. The hunter safely leads him down the mountain and the two unlikeliest of people become linked.

JungHo is a survivor like his father the hunter. He comes to Seoul to change his future. After working his way up the hierarchy of street thugs, and he finds himself a pupil to communism, with a powerful benefactor. Set during Korea’s fight for independence, the many political and military factions fighting for dominance serve as their own character in the story guiding the actions of each individual.

Jade, a young naïve girl from the country inadvertently becomes a courtesan in training in Seoul, when her new young friend Lotus refuses to leave Pyongyang at the behest of her mother without her. Initially not thought to have much potential, Jade defies all her handlers to become a successful actress, eventually falling for a young man of noble birth.

Jade and JungHo’s paths intertwin for more than fifty years, with many others woven in along the way. Their yarn is made up of love, fate, war, loss, friendship and loyalty. Although this novel does not come out until December, I highly recommend adding it to your to be read pile. (Warning there are several triggers—violence for sure, rape, assault, and murder—some of these multiple times.)

I LOVED this book. I was pretty ignorant about the history between Japan, Korea, China and Manchuria--I knew Japan had occupied Korea during World War II but not to this extent and duration. I also have read a bit about present-day North and South Korea, but didn't know how/when the split had happened. So this was both educational and a complete page-turner! I loved the different story lines, and found all of the different characters to be really distinct and well-developed. Even the harder characters (Yamada, Ito, Kim) were given their humanity. I will heartily recommend this and gift it!

I loved this one! It was a little confusing at the start with all the different characters, but they become so well-woven together as the book goes on that the reader is able to gain a deep understanding of all of the main characters. The book spans from the earlier 1900s to the 1960s in Seoul, taking the reader through the war and the aftermath. I could not put the book down and wanted to know what would happen to all the characters.

I struggled to get through this one. It was very slow paced and while the plot was interesting, the pace and long chapters & detailed descriptions ended up making the book drag for me.

This book was interesting, and I really loved the idea behind the narrative. However, I had a big problem with the pacing. I felt like it was way too long, and that the action happened too slowly. The last few chapters all felt like a very prolonged wrap up that definitely could have been tied together in a few pages. All that being said, I’m giving this book 3 stars because I did really enjoy the way that all the storylines came together. I wish that JungHo’s sense of what is going to happen would have paid off more in the second half of the book, but I did really like that we got a tie in to the prologue towards the end. An interesting and very well conceived universe of characters.

This is a poignant historical fiction novel concerning the Korean independence from Japanese occupation and colonization. It was a very educational book for me, and I enjoyed learning about the historical and political changes, especially as to how they affected our protagonist. This was a hard book to read but a rewarding one.

The opening chapter was very strong, and caught my attention. However, I wasn't fully engaged by the characters, possibly because the prose was a little too exposition-y for my taste. With such significant time jumps, it felt like the context for a lot of characterization was missing and the narrative didn't spend enough time fully developing the characters at any individual period. That said, the atmosphere and setting of Japanese-occupied Korea were very evocative.

This one is a bit hard to review. The beginning scene and the connection it sets up doesn't really carry through the book (and therefore makes the description kind of pointless). It does speak to the strength of the women in the time period and the importance of friendship and love, on whatever form it shows up in. Jade was a wonderful character and reading about her evolution was extremely engaging. I was disappointed in Lotus who seemed to become a completely different person, as well as the two men that Jade helped reach their full potential. They owed a lot more than they acknowledged to her. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher..the story is rich and writing is excellent.

This was a gorgeous historical fiction set in the early twentieth century Korea. Hauntingly tragic and beautifully tender, the story of Jade Ahn is interwoven with the fate of Korea in between the world wars. Jade is apprenticed to a courtesan at a young age to learn the ancient trade. Her best friend Lotus and her sister Luna are the only other girls in apprenticeship, and their friendships form the unbreakable bond that leads them through multiple tragedies and loves. Juhea Kim's writing is absolutely beautiful; her sentences are crafted with such care and kindness, even while describing unspeakable horrors. This is Korean fiction at its best. Recommended for fans of Min Jin Lee and Amy Tan--or anyone who enjoys well written historical fiction!

A solid 4 out 5 stars. It was easy to get lost in the setting and the story was very compelling. There was just enough heartache to balance the beauty.

I was really impressed with this one. I didn't really have any expectations going in, but this definitely went well beyond what I did have.

This tells the story of Jade, a small girl living in the north of Korea (during the Japanese colonization), who is basically sold to a courtesan by her mother. I can't imagine being so poor that selling your daughter to a courtesan seems like an acceptable thing, but that's how this character's story begins.

The author manages to weave in folk stories about tigers in a really interesting way. Plus all of the Korean history, which is rich and complicated, definitely adds to the narrative.

I definitely recommend this one.

So beautiful! I have to admit, I was a bit worried to start out with. ‘Beasts of a Little Land’ has a large cast of characters, with some of the characters I didn’t understand why they were there (ex: Yamada. He was a good man & soldier but I didn’t understand his place in the story) and some of their names were a bit too alike to my liking (Lotus & Luna / JungHo & YoungGu…), so needless to say, I got confused as to who was who and almost gave up, but I persevered and it was totally worth it.

‘Beasts of a Little Land’ is a gorgeously told story of Jade, sold into the role of courtesan at the tender age of 10 and forced to build her life through the trials and tribulations of her country, Korea, as it forges its place in the ever changing and violent 20th century world.

Once I got past the names, and figured out who was who, the story really got going for me. I love historical fiction, but one of the problems with HF is when an author does all this research and then decides to bore you with all the extraneous information they’ve learned, Ms Kim doesn’t do that. We are able to see how these characters live within their setting, and are shaped by their surroundings, without their world taking over.

Well Done!

A sweeping, beautiful, heartbreaking book set during the occupation and wars in Korea, about the families we’re born into, the families we choose, and the intersection of fate and the decisions we make. If you loved Pachinko, you MUST read this book.

This ARC was provided by NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
As a person who loves historical fiction, this book was right up my alley-or so I thought! The storyline is interesting, love, war, hardship-all the things that make a great book. However, the amount of characters to keep up with is exhausting. If you are person who does not mind that sort of thing then this should be your next read. I will be purchasing this title for our library, but will not be including it in my own.

Rich with love and friendship, war and death, loyalty and treason, this book was easily the most engaging I've read this year. 'Beasts of a Little Land' revolves between several characters who live through the strain of the Korean Independence movement. From the little villager boy JungHo who becomes an urchin on the streets of Seoul, to Jade and Lotus who grow up training in a courtesan school, to the Japanese General Yamada who leads forces against the Korean resistance, among many others, their stories grip and intertwine and tear apart in heartrending ways. As the author herself notes in her acknowledgements, this story is not so much about who fights and comes out the other side triumphant, but about what all people hold dear: peace. And in its absence, you see how we all suffer for lack of it and how that suffering becomes our great equalizer.

I really appreciated that in the telling of the story, you didn't just follow one character but several. You saw several different experiences and understandings of the political situation that was constantly in motion around them. Reading only the story of the courtesan girls who experienced the upheaval through their daily lives and careers would have deprived me of knowing the complexities faced by those who were involved in the more political realm. And the author had such a subtle, yet enticing way of tying one story to another, even in benign ways that didn't affect the main plot. You didn't just come to care for the characters individually, but you cared also because of how their lives were interwoven in ways they didn't always recognize themselves.

Another great appreciation I had was the realism of the story. This isn't a romanticized version of what it's like to live through wartime. There was the hope of love and attachment at various points in the story, but there was also legitimate loss and fear. It was difficult to face some of those more real moments. Through it all, the author showed how complex, real people would react and adapt, and it was beautifully done.

Anyone looking for a challenging and meaningful read, filled equally with loss and hope, will be beyond satisfied with this book. I couldn't recommend this enough.

I really adored this one, and absolutely fell in love with Jade and Jungho, the leads. The plot itself was phenomal, and I loved the detail included, as it created a really vivid picture of the world our heroine inhabits. I flew threw this book, and would strongly recommend it to anyone who loves Asian culture or history, or magic, or all 3!
This one is an easy 4/5⭐️

Wow I just had to take a day to marinade after reading this book! It had it all and then some - love, war, friendships, motherhood stories, fatherhood stories, inspiration, redemption, the list keeps going! I loved it so much!
Fans of Pachinko and The Sea Women will love this novel yes but also any historical fiction lover and readers who love epic stories where you can’t predict what will happen.
Trust me read this book!
Also this one of my favorite covers ever, so beautiful!

I went into this novel with high hopes. I thought I would be absolutely captivated with the characters and the setting, but unfortunately it never quite got there for me. This story spans over many decades, and there were so many supporting characters that I found it difficult to keep up with. I felt that the characters were also very hard to empathize with. By the end of the story, I only liked a few of them :-(

All that being said, Juhea Kim’s writing is impeccable. Her lyrical prose is truly unlike any other, and the way she was effortlessly able to weave so many different people and relationships was beautiful. The content in this novel was definitely heavy at times, but Juhea Kim never failed to approach it with sincerity and I never felt like these moments were included for shock value.

In addition to the writing, I enjoyed how Korea was treated as if it were a character in the novel, rather than the setting. The vivid descriptions of Korea were so alluring and lovely, it gave the country a magical feel. As someone who wasn’t too familiar with Korea, or the Korean Independence Movement prior to reading, this novel captured its essence in a stunning and alluring way.

Thank you to NetGalley and Ecco for allowing me to read this ARC!

CW: violence, rape, sexual assault, animal death, sexism

I have a cursory knowledge of Korean history, so this novel did a great job of explaining everything that was going on during the timeframes covered in the story. I felt like I learned a little bit more about the actual history of the time.

For the most part, I often thought the women in the story were getting hurt more often than the men. There was a fairly ironic ultimate screwing of JungHo that covered things all across the length of the book. The women, mostly, got happy endings more or less by the end, and the men seemed unfulfilled.

I'm very happy that I had the opportunity to read this as an advanced review copy. Thank you so much!