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Alien Gods
by
Lee Suhyeon
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| Title: | Alien Gods |
| Author: | Lee Suhyeon |
| Genre: | Novel |
| Written: | 2020 (Eng. 2025) |
| Length: | 97 pages |
| Original in: | Korean |
| Availability: | Alien Gods - UK |
| Alien Gods - Canada | |
| directly from: Honford Star |
- Korean title: 외계 신장
- Translated by Anton Hur
- A volume in the Lovecraft Reanimated-series (러브크래프트 다시쓰기 프로젝트)
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Our Assessment:
B : decent if somewhat too compressed tale
See our review for fuller assessment.
The complete review's Review:
Alien Gods is narrated by Kim Minsuh, an unenthusiastic graduate student who acknowledges: "I didn't have any special passion for Korean literature or even academic talent".
Her advisor suggests that: "since I hated critical literature so much and didn't even seem to like books in general but had some experience with mudangism, why not keep on doing that ?"
She's readily convinced -- not least because: "funding was relatively high, considering the state of the humanities, for anything to do with mudang studies".
Mudang are shamans, mediating between the real and spiritual worlds, but Minsuh describes mudangism as being: "in the end, almost disappointingly mundane".
She is, proudly, a sceptic -- "The possession of mudang by gods ? A combination of mental disorders and con jobs".
Still, mudangism offers material for her thesis -- particularly, she thinks, goot rituals: "they were fun", she notes, and: "Goot, at the very least, is an excellent form of performance art"
She goes about researching, hoping also to be exposed to: "the kind of goot rituals that laypeople rarely saw"
At the same time, Minsuh also has some personal issues she's dealing with.
The book opens with her admitting that her greatest fear is of going crazy, like her mother had -- and, sure enough, something soon starts eating away at her.
Or rather at food in her apartment.
Bugs ?
There's physical evidence -- and there are her nightmares (including of, for example, "fist-sized radioactive cockroaches") ...) -- but the exterminator she calls notes: "insects aren't going to leave marks like this. We're looking at proper teeth here".
So maybe rats ?
But there are no droppings or other signs .....
It becomes a nearly all-consuming fear -- "Now the bugs in my dreams turned into large and hideous rats" ... -- and she worries more about losing her mind.
In her mudang research she had been taken to a house, built during the Japanese colonial era.
It is known as the Forbidden House, widely avoided -- and for good reason.
As manshin Gyeongja -- a shaman -- explains: "an abnormal number of people died on its premises", but the new owners want to fix it up and, hey: "a goot or cleansing ceremony would be just the thing to reset the aura of the house" -- and Minsuh wants in.
Minsuh joins Gyeongja and her apprentices for the big expedition to the Forbidden House.
They go armed with everything from gas masks (a Lovecraftian smell is in the air there ...) to lots of cleaning materials to ... a Geiger counter ?
Well, better safe than sorry .....
Unsurprisingly, the exercise turns into quite the dark adventure.
By the end, Minsuh is left wondering: "How much of it was fantasy, and how much had actually happened ?"
In any case, it is a cathartic experience -- and Minsuh was certainly in need of some catharsis.
Among much else, Gyeongja also had some good advice:
But things don't always fit together perfectly. It'll just make life harder for you if you keep thinking that way. Sometimes, things just happen. Good things and bad things both.Alien Gods is a supernatural tale, tinged with (Minsuh's possible) madness, a Lovecraftian take -- complete with strong smells -- on some Korean folk beliefs (with a dash of colonial history thrown in). The reliance on mental instability -- especially Minsuh's black-outs, acting out but with no memory of it (though the neighbors complain) -- is, of course, somewhat frustrating, but that's part of the story; as Lee had her warn right at the outset, Minsuh worries about going crazy ..... And at least it's decently resolved at the story's conclusion (yes, Minsuh has one worry less at that point).
It makes for a decent little novella -- though is perhaps the sort of thing that would have benefitted from being fleshed out more, with Minsuh revealing more about herself and her (day to day, as well as earlier family) life.
- M.A.Orthofer, 18 October 2025
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Alien Gods:
- Honford Star publicity page
- 이수현 at the Greenbook Agency
- Choi JaeHoon's The Call of the Friend
- Yi Seoyoung's Come Down to a Lower Place
- See Index of Korean literature
- See Index of Science Fiction and Fantasy books
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South Korean author Lee Suhyeon (이수현) was born in 1977.
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© 2025 the complete review
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