Kirkus: Bear, then, offers plenty of big, bold, fascinating ideas in a narrative that culminates in a double showdown with a dazzling array of said thoughtful beings…. Impressive at the core. Readers who relished the Jacob’s Ladder trilogy will certainly enjoy this one.
AudioFile: Narrator Yetide Badaki’s dynamic voice returns with this story of Sunny, an Igbo and American albino girl with the juju needed to save humanity. Badaki enlivens Sunny’s character with a bright American accent and gives her friends varied Nigerian- and American-sounding voices. Continuing on from AKATA WITCH, Sunny, Chichi, Orlu, and Sasha are growing as scholars, pushing the boundaries of the rules governing the magical Leopard People and coming full circle to challenge Sunny’s prophetic dream of the apocalypse at the start of series.
Horn Book Magazine: Thirteen-year-old Min is feisty and clever, and she has a powerful secret: she’s a gumiho, a fox spirit disguised as a human. Min can shape-shift and use Charm (fox magic) to alter others’ perceptions and emotions. She enthusiastically wields these powers when she ditches her “dismal life” on the barren planet Jinju in order to track down her brother Jun, a Thousand Worlds Space Forces cadet who’s gone AWOL. Min’s epic adventure leads to run-ins with spaceport security guards, gamblers, and ghosts. She impersonates a dead cadet on a starship battle cruiser and encounters the legendary Dragon Pearl, a mystical orb that creates life. Lee has a knack for world-building. His richly detailed, cohesive, original vision is a lively mash-up of outer-space sci-fi and Korean culture and folklore: starships have gi, an energy flow; pirates fly in groups of four because it’s a number that signifies death; characters, both supernatural and human, eat gimchi and play the board game baduk; Min befriends a dragon cadet who can summon the weather—sometimes inadvertently—and a dokkaebi (Korean goblin) who carries a magical spork. The dokkaebi is also a nonbinary character, who’s referred to with gender-neutral pronouns—a small detail that’s woven in matter-of-factly and just as smoothly as all the other strands in this engaging space opera.
Publishers Weekly
: Matthews’s second novel (after Blood Enemies) since the relaunch of her Jurisdiction series is a tightly styled, simply plotted examination of ambition, obsession, and the many faces of justice, played out in a military SF setting that is deeply informed by the author’s own military experience. Andrej Kosciusko, former torturer for the established order of Jurisdiction, has decamped to Gonebeyond space. Rocked by crises, Jurisdiction is reaching out to its exiles to find a new path forward and so are some other elements who would like to tip the boat over. One of these is the Witt crime syndicate, whose boss nurtures an unhealthy obsession with “Black Andrej.” He delegates Danyo Pefisct, another ex-torturer, to incapacitate Andrej with an engineered virus and transport him back to Jurisdiction. But the Gonebeyond coalition is engaged in military operations against slavers, with all the chaos and displacement of war, and Danyo’s task becomes knotted into the lives of hundreds. Matthews does yeoman’s work in contextualizing characters and past events.
Shelf Awareness: In DRAGON PEARL, Yoon Ha Lee (the Machineries of Empire series) melds elements of Korean myth, science fiction and adventure stories into a strong, cohesive narrative that fans of multiple genres will enjoy…Lee’s inclusion of Korean mythological aspects isn’t limited to supernatural beings; it also impeccably incorporates “geomantic arts-—the flow of gi and the cosmic balance of the universe” into how the Space Forces’ battle cruisers are engineered. All these components work in harmony to shape Min’s quest, immersing readers in her journey.
Lee’s epic romp through space also includes discussions about prejudice (“Other supernaturals, like dragons and goblins and shamans… wield their magic openly” and are even praised for it, while foxes must pretend to be extinct), nonbinary identity (“This [guard’s] particular badge… had a small symbol next to the name that let me know they should be addressed neutrally, as neither female nor male”) and inequality between rich and poor (“Whoever this councilor was, I doubted she was thinking about people like me and my family, who could use the Pearl’s powers to make our lives less desperate.”) Lee handles these topics sensitively without burdening his audience.
DRAGON PEARL shoots for the moon and lands flawlessly, delivering a rollicking and meaningful space adventure.
School Library Journal: Strong, well-developed characters . . . Give to fans of A.S. King and Andrew Smith.
B&N Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog: Wells has been a beloved but under-read voice in fantasy for two decades, which is why it is so gratifying to see the success she’s having with the bestselling, and now, Hugo- and Nebula-winning Murderbot Diaries novella series, which follow a rogue Security Unit cyborg that has hacked its governor module and gained sentience and free will—and given itself the (mostly ironic) name Murderbot. This fourth and final novella (a full-length novel arrives next year) finds Murderbot close to getting the goods on the evil corporation GrayCris. When it learns that its former owner/possible friend Dr. Mensah is under threat, Murderbot doesn’t understand its own urge to save her. Wells’ explorations of free will and the question of what, exactly, makes us human remain fascinating, and the snarky narrative voice—and the murder-y mayhem—that peppers the story as it marches toward to a bracing conclusion are as fun as always.
Publishers Weekly: In this highly original novel by Lee (the Machineries of Empire series for adults), 13-year-old Min must venture to the stars of the Thousand Worlds in order to find her older brother, Jun, who is suspected of deserting the Space Forces to search for the legendary Dragon Pearl. Min’s quick wits and technical prowess come in handy, but it’s her abilities as one of the fox people to shape-shift and charm others that prove vital after she leaves her home planet of Jinju aboard the freighter Red Azalea. When her brother’s former ship rescues the vessel from mercenaries, she poses as slain cadet Bae Jang, promising his ghost that she will avenge his death in exchange for impersonating him on the ship. Disguised as the dead cadet, Min is able to continue both quests, enlisting the aid of two of Bae’s friends—female dragon Haneul and nonbinary goblin Sujin—all the while avoiding the scrutiny of Captain Hwan as the ship heads to the Ghost Sector, the probable location of the Dragon Pearl. Lee offers a perfect balance of space opera and Korean mythology with enough complexity to appeal to teens.
Publisher’s Weekly: [A] riveting near-future debut… This claustrophobic, horror-leaning tour de force is highly recommended for fans of Jeff VanderMeer’s Annihilation and Andy Weir’s The Martian.
New York Times: Martha Wells’s EXIT STRATEGY (Tor.com) is the fourth and final part of her brilliant Murderbot Diaries, a series of far-future novellas set in a universe worn out by corporate indifference and bureaucratic inertia. A single grumpy security unit—Murderbot—fights for life, liberty, and the pursuit of hours and hours of soap operas. The first book, “All Systems Red,” won both Nebula and Hugo Awards this year and is definitely the place to start.
I came late to these novellas, and during a difficult month this year I read almost nothing else. Murderbot’s voice, a beautiful blend of exhausted cynicism and deep, helpless love, was the only thing that felt like both a match to my mood and an appropriate response to the events provoking it. Murderbot has no illusions about the way the world works and will say so blisteringly, but remains so passionately committed to the people it loves and doing what’s right that I kept welling up in response. Its angry, poignant point of view, wrapped up in sharp, short bites of space adventure, is utterly addictive, and I’m genuinely delighted—as well as a little relieved—that the series’ success has greenlit a full-length Murderbot novel, so that I don’t yet have to bid it goodbye.