Flux

by Jinwoo Chong

Recommended if you love: mystery, time travel and multiple dimensions, and stories about corrupt corporations.

While Jinwoo Chong’s Flux centers on a mystery of sorts, sprinkled into the storyline are queer flirtations, the complexities of Asian American identity formation, our emotional relationships to TV and pop culture and the process of grappling with grief. Which is to say, this book has many dimensions—not just in space and time, but in what it is exploring in the content. It is a slow simmer at first asking the reader to trust, but then there's a moment where the pieces start to come together and then it's from 5 to 100 in the speed and intensity of the plot. If you're not willing to experience the more experimental approach to storytelling and sit with some ambiguity for the first third of the book then you won't get the satisfaction of the reveals. There's a fair amount of timey-wimey stuff around the time travel elements and the technology that you'd do best to not question too deeply in service of enjoying the storyline.

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