A few months ago, I was contacted by Lee Sanhwa, a Korean author, to do a review of a Yuri board game, Yuri Ranbou (百合乱慕), which was followed by another fun review of the Yuri-themed board game Sisters of Dangerous Yuri Council (ヤバ百合会の妹たち). As we corresponded, Lee-nim described his most recent book as being about cyborgs, Yuri and dessert, which…okay, I’m in. ^_^

An Error Occurred ( 오류가 발생했습니다) is available only in Korean at this time, I purchased it through Booksonkorea.com, which was a pretty painless process and the book was shipped very quickly. Right from the first pages, I was gripped by a smart, fun, ever-so-slightly-gross, and engaging science fiction story.

We are introduced to a world that has been split into two cities, the upper city, thought to be a paradise, Red Velvet and the undercity where we are, Black Forest. We meet our protagonist Donauwelle and her mysterious roommate Haluholo. The society presented has two notable features – it is the kind of  late capitalism we are used to in much of our science fiction and, slowly but surely, our reality, in which advertising is attached to literally everything. (Would you like to read this  message ad-free? Pay 10 drops) And everything – people, places, companies, currency, are named after sweets. I wondered right away if the drops mentioned were named after Japanese Sakuma fruit drops candy and, yup, sure enough, the glossary assured me they were.

In Black Forest most people upgrade their bodies with prosthetics, and Haluholo is a full-body prosthetic person with no “meat.” One of Donauwelle’s colleagues at investigation company, Petit-4, Sachertorte is obsessed with getting the latest and greatest parts, much as people in our world rush to grab the new iPhone.

Initially we are thrown into a mystery in which someone seems to be committing gruesome murders and taking the human flesh from people. Petit-4’s job is to live-stream as they investigate. They are pretty good at their job and with some help from Donauwelle’s mysterious roommate Haluholo, they conclude the investigation quickly. Following that are several short, snappy adventures in corrupt systems, the gangs of the Black Forest , a scam being run on prosthetics and a systemic issue that seems to be affecting all the companies that run Black Forest.

With each subsequent mystery, we learn more about Donauwelle’s coworkers, Sata Andagi, Petit-4 group leader Ladyfingers (who has an on-again off-again thing going on with Sachertorte) and the world, which is, apparently run by Divinity…only something, somewhere, is broken. Companies are not functioning, projections are off…what is going on? And who the heck is Haluholo, who always seems to have too much drops and information?

All of these questions are answered in a very satisfying second half of the book, in which we have three reveals, one I expected, one I did not and one that was just fantastic writing. I’d love to talk about the book ending with you, but it will be a huge spoiler, so you are just gonna have to read it, and drop by the Okazu Discord to chat. ^_^

I read the book using Google Lens as a translation tool and I assumed I missed some of the subtleties of language and intent, but overall, I felt that I got the gist of everything. The use of sweets for names was never tiring. For instance one of the gangs was cleverly named Pan de Muerto, Divinity was as the ruling body. The names are drawn from all over the world, making the glossary worth reading  – especially for some of the snarky comments about British sweets. ^_^

This reprint edition from 2023 includes an extra new epilogue post the 2018 first printing and an additional author’s note. The first author’s note is one of the very best I have ever read honestly, as it discusses how authors’ notes are ubiquitous in books, but no one has ever won an award for one, no guides are written on how to write one and no one ever reads them. ^_^ Well, I do read them and this one was outstanding.

At this point, you may be wondering if the story is Yuri. And to answer that, you must understand that machine translation tools all default to “he” and “him” unless forced to use a different word. So almost regardless of what was written on the page, I was getting a story about mostly men, when Lee-nim mentions that he wrote the book with the assumption that everyone was a woman and that gender wasn’t an issue. That complicated the story, but also set up the thing I was expecting in a more obvious way. Oh, and, yes, it is Yuri.

Ratings:

Story – 9
Characters – 9 (I’d kind of like a spin-off about Ladyfingers and/or Momochacha)
Service – Yes, surprisingly
Yuri – 8

Overall – 10

This gets a 10 because of one final thing that I did not even know I liked. The structure of the novel – short stories that build up to one major arc – apparently is my favorite structure! Who knew?

I don’t know how comfortable people are reading with translation tools. I’m pretty comfortable with it, as I have been doing it for years in any number of languages, Thai, Tagalog, Korean, Chinese,Vietnamese (and still Japanese) in my pursuit of Yuri. So, if the idea of reading a book while staring at a page through your phone does not intimidate you – or if you are learning, or can read, Korean –  I highly recommend An Error Occurred by Lee Sanhwa, from Safe House Publishing.

I have already begun to write English-language publishers to suggest this book be licensed. I think folks would really like it.

Speaking of English, cover artist Kim Sanho’s work can also be see on a Korean novel that has been translated into English, that might be of interest here, A Magical Girl Retires, which is on my to-read list. ^_^