The Black Orb by Ewhan Kim

 

So, in the library this looked like a weird novel skittering on boundary between horror and SF, with maybe some things to say about society and people and stuff. Yeah, it's that, though it's weirder (in many uses of that word) than could be put on the dust jacket. That's not a complaint: It tilts more than a little bit gonzo but I don't see how a novel about black orbs that pass through walls and absorb people then spit them back out more or less where they were nearly three months later couldn't be. While there's some social commentary (or at least observations) during the first half-ish of the novel, as society (at least that portion of it in South Korea) unravels then implodes, I think the strongest things the novel has to say about people and society and how they react to tragedy and/or overpowering strangeness come after people have come back, as they look for scapegoats. The translation here is at least decent English-language prose, I presume it's at least not better than the original Korean; the characters feel remarkably plausible even looking at them from within a very different culture, and the dialogue and descriptions all seem well nailed down. The ending might be something of a Moebius thing, it's a little hard to tell exactly what the author intends, there; outside of that, this is a really good read.