Yang Mina is anything, but your typical teenager having descended from a Japanese line of Dragons and thanks to her ancestor giving mortals time magic her and her families lives are dedicated to jumping timelines in order to fix the mistakes of rogue dragon descendants. It's not as glamourous as it sounds either, as her parents are "Floater agents" they can be sent off to Korea, Japan, or America at any time which is how Mina finds herself living in Seoul trying to get a boy she only kind of likes to kiss her. One kiss and she will finally have enough points to get the promotion her parents never did and access to the classified files of the agency, which for Mina is the most important thing in the world to her. Because Mina knows she had a sister at some point, but no one not even her parents seem to remember her. Just as Mina is getting close to her promotion though she meets a rogue agent by the name of Yejun who tells her that not only did she have a sister but he knows how she can find them, however, it means going rogue herself putting everything she's worked for at risk on the say of a boy she barely knows.
This was absolutely freaking adorable! Prior to this I've only read The Scarlet Alchemist and Cora Zheng which are much darker books than this is so I wasn't sure if I would like it, but as Lee Baker is a masterful storyteller I should not have been worried!
Mina is amazing, of course. She has a lot of the same hang ups that any teenage girl does, but as a mixed-race girl living in Korea, she's got one more on top of everything else. She sees herself as too big, too clumsy and definitely not as smart as her Korean classmates. This is all very important to pay attention too as Lee Baker twists this at the end in a way that was so wonderful I teared up a bit. Outside of her internal conflicts she's clearly always had hangups with the Agency, remembering the little bits about her sister that she does certainly puts those over the top, but I think even without this those misgivings would have always been there because the Agency just sounds evil from the beginning. More on them later.
Yejun is wonderful, he's a perfect love interest if maybe a bit too mature for his age. To be fair I think probably my only complaint with this is that both Mina and Yejun were way to mature for their ages. And sure, sure hopping timelines at the same rate that I hop a bus in a year (probably more actually) is certainly going to make someone more mature I just think having them be in their mid-twenties would have fit their personalities better. Anyhoo, back to the love interest, he's genuinely just adorable, how he does things with Mina probably would have been better if he had been honest with her from the beginning, but I can see why he thought it was best to dance around the truth.
The bad guy is technically Hong Gildong and he is absolutely evil, however, it's a bit more complicated than that and has a lot to do with the time travel thing. But before I get into that just a little bit about how this whole Agency works. The Agency is made of descendants of the Dragon Gods who have chosen to help make sure any the timeline goes the way it is supposed too. BTS exists, North Korea and South Korea are separate countries, etc etc. However, agents do go rogue when this happens, they are completely erased from existence, like they never existed in the first place.
I love time travel stories and honestly do not care if the time travel side of things makes a bloody lick of sense scientifically so please, please don't comment saying "But time travel isn't possible!" Pretty sure dragons aren't either but here we are.
Moving on.
What I found interesting about his specific time travel story is it actually takes from quite a few of time travel tropes to make this really unique and ultimately corruptible (is it really a story set in Seoul without some corporate corruption?) new form. I mean this all sounds like a horrible idea from the very beginning; Otohime gives a human time magic, humans let it loose in the world, and then the Dragon Gods of Korea and Japan are like "Well our only choice is to rely on humans." What could possibly go wrong? Humans are gonna human, that's what. Lee Baker though shows us both sides of this conversation though and I feel like it is absolutely necessary in this type of story to do so and I'm glad (as one can be given the circumstances) that she used the sinking of The Sewol as a good demonstration of this. If you watch Kdramas you know about this tragedy many have been dedicated to it. For those that have not heard of it though the word tragedy seems too small for what happened; 304 people died, 250 of those were children from the same high school. It took the Korean Coast Guard almost an hour to show up, there was false reports that everyone had been saved, and everyone who was responsible pointed fingers at everyone else, so it went from tragedy to a freaking disaster. In the book the sinking of the Sewol is a required event to keep the timeline steady, but give me a break if you had the ability to undue something of thing magnitude, wouldn't you? Furthermore, what if you found out your bosses were corrupt and now you can't even trust whether or not it was truly necessary to the timeline? And to be fair this whole thing is why I can't even really call a complaint about Mina and Yejun's maturity at their age a true complaint. You have children carrying out orders to literally let other children die and if they don't some higher up at the Agency you've discovered is just as corrupt as those involved in the Sewol disaster will literally erase you from existence. That's unmeasurable amounts of PTSD at a very young age. It's also part of why Mina doubts herself as much as she does this agency she works for basically controls every portion of her existence, she is required to follow orders to the letter, and if she doesn't there is a very real threat of complete and utter erasure from existence happening. If you are never allowed to think for yourself in even the most mundane places where you can of course you are going to doubt yourself. Someone has always told you what to do. And while yes ultimately, we find the Hong is totally the most rogue agent, the fact that you've got literal Dragon Gods still out there not keeping a better eye on their descendants speaks volumes.
Okay I maybe went a little overboard there but honestly this really isn't a surface level conversation which is refreshing in a YA novel.
I would like to say before ending this that I had no idea that honey butter chips were a thing until I read this and I now have I believe twelve bags of them on my way to my house right now because omg they sound amazing!
I definitely recommend this one for really any age. To be fair I'm not even really sure why I say that anymore YA books are good. Kdrama fans are absolutely going to love this to no end so highly, highly recommend for all of you. And if you did not cast Felix as Yejun, I'm not sure why you are in my timeline! Kidding, kidding.
As always thanks to Netgalley and Macmillan's Children's Publishing Group for the eArc!!
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