After falling asleep one evening, Korean American James Mun is seemingly transported to a surreal world. But this isn\u2019t a dream; it\u2019s \u201cthe Flowering,\u201d a dimension some people access via sleep. After meeting Bloom, a giant, lovable blue wolf who instantly takes to him, James joins Bloom\u2019s Crew Blue, consisting of E (the leader), Honey, and Lux. (While they\u2019re all humans who visit the Flowering each night, Bloom is a native citizen.) The crew, armed with weapons the members can materialize (with certain limitations), helps to free \u201cmarked citizens\u201d who must move on to other dimensions. Those marked who don\u2019t leave become crazed \u201cmoulded\u201d citizens, which the crew vows to take out. When things start to happen that even E, Honey, and Lux can\u2019t explain, Crew Blue seeks a Shaman in the unpredictable City. Kim\u2019s delightfully intricate, dreamlike world comes with copious rules; the most crucial one involves monitoring sleep-time with a tattoolike \u201cwatch\u201d on the back of a hand. (The humans will die if they don\u2019t get 56 hours in a given week, and if their mandatory quota of eight hours a night falls short, they must quickly make it up.) With the exception of the instantly irresistible Bloom, warming up to these characters takes time\u2014James makes constant mistakes, Lux neglects to relay pertinent information, and E and Honey habitually glare and growl at \u201cnewborn\u201d James and call him \u201cmoron\u201d or \u201cidiot.\u201d The cast, however, ultimately forms a strong bond as they engage in exhilarating battles (\u201cMassive coils of hard, segmented flesh followed, dropping like bags of sand and slithering aside\u201d). Individual backstories further complicate both the plot and characters, and the sublime final act will leave readers itching for the sequel. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
After falling asleep one evening, Korean American James Mun is seemingly transported to a surreal world. But this isn\u2019t a dream; it\u2019s \u201cthe Flowering,\u201d a dimension some people access via sleep. After meeting Bloom, a giant, lovable blue wolf who instantly takes to him, James joins Bloom\u2019s Crew Blue, consisting of E (the leader), Honey, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":3953,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3952","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interesting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3952"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3952"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3952\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3953"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3952"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3952"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3952"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}