Brilliantly weird and weirdly brilliant. This is an alien tale like few others, wonderfully crass and yet deeply meaningful in so many ways.

9 Books About Our Many Complicated Relationships With Food

Walking Practice by Dolki Min, translated by Victoria Caudle

In the surreal South Korean novel, Walking Practice, you, the reader, must listen to a shapeshifting alien who morphs their unimaginable, extraterrestrial body into human form—all the better for the Hunter to lure their Prey: sweet soft humans. Without eating daily, the alien cannot maintain its human form; the passages describing the alien’s flesh and organs bursting out of its meat shell are remarkably similar to the destabilizing force of being hangry. In order to eat, the alien constantly adjusts their gender presentation and their body to match the fantasies that people lay out on dating apps.

After all, the Hunter reflects during a booty call-turned-disembowling, “My prey’s pleasure is my pleasure.” But the alien is also playing into their own fantasies, of having a real mate to eat real food with on real dates, instead of this eat-or-be-eaten survival of the hungriest.

Honestly, I was bored with this book. I think the since for the majority of this book it is character driven and I found myself zoning out a lot. With character-driven it needs to hold the reader captivated, and I think this is one of the book's flaws.

Walking Practice is definitely a unique book. I found it a bit too strange and gory for my personal taste but it is definitely a book that will appeal to a certain type of reader. I hope it finds those readers.

Gross and offensive and wonderful. I loved this extended allegory about gender. I read it compulsively.

What a strange, disgusting ride! I truly enjoyed it. I loved Min's writing style. It was very Moshfeghian. And short to boot! 3 stars!

Wow this one was was strange and yucky in a good way!! I really wish I could read it in the original Korean though because I'm not sure if some of the issues I had were due to the translation or just how the book was written. Thank you so much to HarperVia for the ARC of this one.

What a weird book.

I loved reading it and I loved the illustrations throughout but whew! It was a little more graphic than I thought it would be, but really quite enjoyable!

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

My Selling Pitch:
Do you want to read a translated work about an alien trying to pass as human so he can eat his Tinder dates? Can you tolerate a story whose formatting makes it a headache to read at times?

Pre-reading:
I feel like it’s worth noting that I still have not watched Squid Games. I’m not a huge sci-fi reader. Bring it on.

Thick of it:
One day books’ first pages are gonna stop surprising me when they immediately jump into sex because I am me, and I do know what I like to read, but like I’m just never prepared for it.

Also is this a gay-lien? (Leaving. I’m leaving.)

I’m reading a lot of books on gender discourse lately, and I don’t know how that happens, but it keeps happening. I’m not mad about it. It’s just interesting. Very topical and timely.

Lady alien.

The translation to English is a bit stilted.

Praying mantis alien.

The translation skews into so bad it’s funny/quirky. Like it’s not unreadable. It’s just bonkers. (It tips over into unreadable territory by the end.)

I think the file is damaged or corrupted somehow because the spacing is really off and it was very hard to read for a few pages.

Stairs are my nemesis as well.

apoplectic

She breasted boobily down the stairs.

That’s my purse. I don’t know you.

Oh, the text spacing is not an error. It is on purpose. That’s just obnoxious.

Post-reading:
It's a fun idea, but it feels very unfinished. I think it suffers a lot from being translated. Spacing the text like that makes it a headache to read. I like the first chapter. I only like the first chapter. It’s got a funny, quirky voice, but the story unravels quickly. There should be more societal and gender commentary. There should be more of a message to it. It gets repetitive, and it borders on unreadable at times. It feels more like the idea for a book rather than an actual book.

Who should read this:
Translated work fans
Alien fans
Gender debate fans

Do I want to reread this:
No

Similar books:
* Manhunt by Gretchen Felker-Martin-trans characters, apocalypse body horror, gender discourse
* Tell Me I’m Worthless by Alison Rumfitt-queer horror, gender discourse
* Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke by Eric LaRocca-queer horror

A gory yet bizarrely endearing account of a Mitski-coded alien who must seduce and kill humans to survive. The narrator's poignant voice and dry humor shone, and the illustrations added a special touch. The gender was off the charts. I highlighted several passages and, though I didn't fully grasp this unique story the first time, definitely intend to reread this someday and get all emotional over a murderous alien again.

The gross-out nature of this book was a lot of fun, and I enjoyed how the central concept metaphorized the experience of living marginalized. I do think it was too long for its own good, but ultimately it was still a fun journey worth going on.

3.5/5

I started off enjoying this but there were parts that seemed grotesque for the sake of being grotesque and it started to drag a bit. I think this would have worked better as a short story.

This novel is weird in the best ways. Like an x files episode, it follows an alien trying to inhabit human forms in order to hunt and eat (humans). It is funny and gross and thought provoking.

Walking Practice was a surprising and entertaining book, with lots and lots of weirdness and an end that surprise me a whole lot. I consider myself still a novice in horror, and this book did a great job in furthering my introduction to the genre, deep diving into the connexion with sci-fi.

The writing style mixed first and second person, addressing the reader directly in funny ways. I found myself entranced with the descriptions of the protagonist on their human habits and attempts to be more fitting with society. As a whole, I enjoyed a lot the anthropological aspect of the book: how would an alien look at humans and their endeavours on the day to day it's something that lots of sci-fi books approach, but this lens focused on sex and hunting for food was very diverse.

The only thing missing for me was a bit more depth - I wanted more pages, more moments, more descriptions. It was a great read and I do hope to read from this author again.

My thanks to NetGalley and HarperVia for this e-ARC in exchange for my honest opinion.

⭐️⭐️⭐️
What’s a distinctly non-humanoid alien stranded on earth to do when starvation and eternal boredom threaten their existence? Why, don a human flesh suit Men in Black style and blend, blend, blend of course.
Our alien protagonist is something of a gourmand—pity the only substance that truly sustains them happens to be the only creatures possibly worthy of communication for the bored alien. Oh well—an alien’s gotta eat, right?
Easy enough, until silly things like suddenly realizing humans might not enjoy being eaten begin to ruin the alien’s happily amoral existence.

I mostly enjoyed the dark, satirical humor and casual style of the narration, though at times it made it difficult to decide what was happening and what was simply inner dialogue. However, despite being a translation, most of the jokes landed.
I felt torn about the short length of the story—it would definitely need more depth to warrant full novel length, but I really wanted to know more about the alien’s past and what they would do with their moral conundrums.
On the other hand, the events became pretty repetitive after a while; some things could have easily been cut without hurting the plot.

All in all, this was an intriguing concept with clever ties to gender, belonging, and what it means to be human at all. I will be curious to see what Dolki Min comes up with next.

Brought to you by OBS reviewer Andra

Dolki Min is an artist and writer based in South Korea. Walking Practice is their first novel. Walking Practice is a story of a shapeshifting alien who has crashed into Earth with no way home (if their home is still even liveable). The alien used sex to attract humans (alternating between being the male persona and the female persona). Then following sex, the alien then consumed their date. The crux of the story is being guided through various dates – as they had to occur daily for the alien to be able to consume enough nutrients to stay alive.

While the story held my interest, at least well enough for me to finish the story, I did feel that this tale was not really for me. I felt as if the storytelling seemed to drag on – seeming repetitive. It was interesting to get the details of how they made themselves presentable to the human they were meeting.

The illustrations that were included in the story were stunning!

As a first story by author Dolki Min – I felt it was well told. If you are into science fiction, then I can see that this book would be right up your alley. So I say – give this author a chance.

I really liked the perspective of an alien looking at all the weird ways we are human. Walking Practice was funny, grotesque, and witty.

Walking Practice was so much fun! This book had me laughing at times and sometimes grossed me out. The whole story is just outrageous and unique, and I had a lot of fun reading it. Not to mention the illustrations were awesome and such a great addition to the story. I will definitely be reading more from this author because this was such a good time.

An enjoyable, fun read that ending up really making me think. This author is new to me but after this book, I will search for more. A book from the point of view of an alien. Not something I would look for, but ended up enjoying.

A one of a kind read, this stream of consciousness is so acutely detailed in both surrounding and character you can’t help but be taken in.

This story of a refugee and their attempt to assimilate is so sudden in its flow, and rapid in its delivery it’s difficult to put down.

I would definitely recommend it for a change of pace from conventional novels.