★Park, Silvia. Luminous. S. & S. Mar. 2025. 400p. ISBN 9781668021668. $29.99. SF

DEBUT Park’s debut is a sci-fi detective novel set in a future reunified Korea, where personal robots are ubiquitous. The main characters are all enmeshed in robotics in some way; Ruijie the schoolgirl has robotic exoskeleton legs, detective Jun is more than half cyborg, and Jun’s sister Morgan designs robot software. The mystery surrounds a kidnapped robot “child” and underground robot trafficking and abuse. The most fascinating and effective part of the story is that the essential question, if robots have humanity, is ostensibly ignored. Robots are accepted as things that people have, but also as adopted siblings, as children, as beings to live with, to love and to mourn. The essential nature of these robots slowly emerges as the enigmatic central robot, Yoyo, reveals his interconnection with all the main characters. Yoyo is both a sympathetic companion and an avenging angel. VERDICT This momentous tour de force overtops existing works on robots by leaps and bounds, approaching the subject with a subtlety that allows readers to focus on the effects robots are sure to have in the future; a meditation on and an illustration of human and robot relationships in which it is difficult to distinguish between them.