Teo’s Durumi by Elaine V. Cho (Hillman Grad Books) ~Janet Brown

Back in the middle of the last century, there were serials, a clever marketing device that instilled customer loyalty. Magazines, radio stations, and movie theaters all produced stories that ended with cliffhangers, to be continued in the next installment. Still to be found on streaming sites (Game of Thrones anyone?), this gimmick dissolved in other arenas--until Elaine V. Cho resurrected it in Ocean’s Godori, (Asia by the Book, May 2024).

This science fiction adventure ended so abruptly that some readers were infuriated. Clearly they had never gone to a movie matinee where a weekly Saturday serial ended with the invitation to return for  “another installment in this thrilling drama.” For those of us who had, we knew there would be a sequel. Unfortunately we had to wait longer than a week to discover what would happen next.

It’s been over a year since the characters of Ocean’s Godori escaped death by crash-landing their spacecraft on a distant moon. Although its sequel, Teo’s Darumi, begins at the exact point where its predecessor ended, memories fade and not everyone will have a copy of the first installment in their bookcases for quick reference.

Luckily Elaine V. Cho offers a brief refresher course given by one of the minor characters, providing thumbnail sketches of the multitudes who propel the plots of both books. It would have been helpful to have included the glossary of Korean vocabulary that came at the end of Ocean’s Godori, adding the new words that appear in Teo’s Darumi. Still careful readers will find clues to their meanings through context and quick explanations given when the words first show up. 

For those who have come to this sequel without having read its predecessor, Cho has constructed it so cleverly that it works as a stand-alone novel. While those who read the first might miss the focus on Ocean, that prickly daredevil loner, the characters in this new book soon flourish under their newly acquired spotlights and the plot swiftly moves into new dangers and fresh horrors.

Teo, the only survivor of the massacre that killed off the rest of his family’s wealthy dynasty; Sasani, a pariah, shunned for his knowledge of funeral arts, who has found hopes for a new community as the spacecraft’s medical officer; Phoenix, the dashing space raider who’s attracted to Teo’s fortune and Ocean’s skills as a pilot; Ocean who finds a kinship with Sasani, since she is also a pariah of sorts, band together in ways that surprise them all.

Cho has given alarming depths to Corvus, one of the most hideous villains in any galaxy, giving him accessories that can suck the souls and memories from his victims, an activity to which he has become addicted, with dreams of interplanetary domination. As a counterpoint, she gives her main characters whopping helpings of romance, so much of it that only the grisly violence of the final battle can submerge the affairs of the heart. 

The violence goes on for fifty horrendous pages in which nobody is sure that goodness will triumph--squeamish readers, be warned. Since Cho has given new dimensions to Ocean and her colleagues, their bloody struggles to survive are close to unbearable and will be absolutely impossible to abandon.

Once again, room is left for another installment but these new conclusions will leave readers satisfied. Too bad. As a person who grew up in the mid-20th century, I miss that cliffhanger.