Jake Casella Brookins Reviews Ocean’s Godori by Elaine U. Cho

Ocean’s Godori, Elaine U. Cho (Hillman Grad Books 978-1-63893-059-4, 352pp, $28.00, hc)

Set in a lightly sketched future in which humans have spread into space, terraforming along the way, Elaine U. Cho’s debut novel Ocean’s Godori follows Ocean Yoon, a talented spaceship pilot. Following an initially unexplained fall from grace, Ocean has signed on with the Ohneul, a low-ranking ship. Aloof but comfortable in her ship’s found-family dynamic, Ocean’s biggest challenges are phone calls from home and figuring out her feelings for the ship’s newest member – until, that is, her best friend, wealthy scion Teo Anand, is framed for a brutal murder. Teo, Ocean, and a motley crew of shipmates and outlaws soon find themselves enmeshed in a solar system-spanning web of deceit and revenge, with personal stakes every bit as important as the political.

The book’s jacket copy advertises it as “Becky Chambers meets Firefly,” which fairly well covers, at least in broad strokes, the general structure and feeling of Ocean’s Godori. This is not science fic­tion heavily invested in realism – there’s a kind of cheerful disregard of physics and location in space throughout the novel (one character hails from a terraformed Prometheus, which is a bit tough for me to envision), along with a mildly campy reframing of spaceships as cars, complete with steering wheels and brake lights. Instead, Ocean’s Godori focuses on its characters, using tried-and-true small ensemble archetypes: the hotshot pilot with a dark past, the quirky mechanic, the brooding new doctor. Cho leans more overtly into sexual tension than most of the science fiction I’ve read in this vein, with a few possible pairings providing a kind of backbeat to the nonromantic plot developments, and avoids spelling out details of the larger political reality in favor of intimate, domestic shipboard scenes throughout much of the novel. Another strong (and sometimes more somber) thread is Ocean’s troubled relationship with her Korean heritage, piloting spaceships instead of swimming in Earth’s ocean with her haenyeo family, while the cultural setting – the Korean Alliance appears to be the major power in the solar system, with other nations and tradi­tions represented on various planets and moons – informs the novel throughout.

This occasionally leads to some odd juxtaposi­tions. There is a surprisingly high level of violence, including a notably gruesome mass murder, and, despite an apparently unchallenged political-military body controlling the solar system, there’s a Wild West kind of unpredictability to the set­ting that sees Ocean and other characters ready to deal out violence at the drop of a hat. I’m left a bit uneasy by the framing of the antagonists here – they may be brutal, sadistic criminals, but they were motivated by brutal oppression; with that motivation in mind, it’s hard for me to ignore the comparative privilege of our protagonists, who in­clude one of the richest people in the solar system. Sometimes jarring, the action scenes more often feel a bit weightless in comparison to the extensive character work Cho is doing throughout.

Indeed, more than the gunfights and chase sequences, what marks this novel is the space it takes for internal, interpersonal scenes. The Ohneul’s crew spends a significant amount of time selecting snack food for ship movie nights, discussing the finer points of skincare routines, and generally leaning hard into the sitcom or romcom dimensions, with some extremely well-done moments of romantic tension throughout. Ocean herself is pretty clearly intended to have some kind of relationship with Haven, the ship’s awkward new doctor; in the back half of the novel, Teo finds himself strongly attracted to the Robin Hood-esque criminal who winds up entangled with Ocean and her allies.

These personal plotlines are far more central to the novel than its politics or action scenes – despite the science-fictional premises of dop­pelgangers and interplanetary resistance that threaten him, Teo genuinely feels interested in pursuing his dream of space-suit fashion design. Along with the running threads on food and other quotidian concerns, and the novel’s deep invest­ment in its romantic setups, it’s a good example of where Ocean Godori’s strengths and interests lie: At first glance, these pivots to seemingly smaller stakes might seem odd, when spaceships are blowing up and shadowy plots threaten the interplanetary order. But they’re not actually small stakes. They’re personal, character-driven, and where the novel really shines, with a ton of interesting details: what Teo’s suit designs actually look like and why, what culinary decisions the Ohneul’s crew are arguing about.

Ocean’s Godori wraps up quickly, leaving large threads of the plot unresolved, but not necessarily in a bad way – a lot of the novel works by the ten­sion in what’s unspoken, whether that’s romantic chemistry or the briefly explored political under­belly of the solar system. There’s definitely places for these characters and plots to go, and what’s already here shows a mix of strengths that I think will find an eager audience.

This review and more like it in the May 2024 issue of Locus.

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