The Rainfall Market (You Yeong-Gwang)

The Rainfall Market
You Yeong-Gwang, translated by Slin Jung
Ace
Fiction, YA? Fantasy
***+ (Okay/Good)

DESCRIPTION: Everyone's heard rumors of the Rainfall Market. Supposedly, if you're trapped and frustrated and at rock bottom in your life with no way out or up, you can write a letter to a particular address - and sometimes, just sometimes, you will recieve a Ticket to the Rainfall Market, with instructions to arrive on the first day of the rainy season. Here, among the Dokkaebi spirits, one may trade away the pains and sorrows of life and purchase a magic Orb that will forever change your fortunes - but only one orb, and if you do not leave the market before the rainy season ends, you'll vanish forever.
Kim Serin hates her life. She hates living in a condemned building that's slated for demolition. She hates being so poor that university isn't ever going to be an option. She hates that her mother works so hard and is so busy that she barely notices her own daughter. She hates being so lonely after her sister ran away from home. She would do anything, just anything, for a chance to be someone else, to live a different life. She only half-believes the stories of the Rainfall Market, but she's desperate enough to try anything, so she writes her letter. Surprisingly, she gets a red envelope with a golden Ticket tucked inside.
She doesn't know what to expect when she goes to the tiny little village beyond the end of the train line, but what she finds is a hidden city of wonders and dangers and magic... and, unbeknownst to her, a hidden power struggle between Dokkaebi in which Serin is just a pawn - and a potential sacrifice.

REVIEW: There seems to be a string of Asian cozy fantasies coming out these days, or maybe it's just that there's a string of them somehow coming across my radar. In any event, this promised a light, cozy tale, and I was in the mood for light and cozy, what with so many, many things being dark and decidedly not cozy. (Plus I'd just finished a Stephen King novella, and I try to switch up moods.) What I found was a story with shades of Miyazaki's Spirited Away, in a whimsical fairy tale marred mostly by predictability and a Lesson that's too obvious from the start.
Though marketed at general adult audiences, The Rainfall Market feels more like young adult, or maybe even middle-grade; Serin's worries about university and the future strike me as more (young) teen, but the overall tone skews light and bubbly and even silly, with a surreal blunting of corners and softening of blows and that sense of the main character being walked through adventures and events with just enough peril to be a little challenged but not so much as to ever really be in serious danger. The descriptions make me wonder if it wasn't intended to be illustrated or animated; there's an exaggeration to things, even the human girl Serin, that made me think of anime.
In any event, Serin starts out clearly - and with some justification - unhappy with her life, trudging through school and even messing up in her martial arts training (the one thing that brings her happiness and which she thought she could do well until she messes up in front of everyone), then climbing the endless stairs to her condemned home and a mother who scarcely seems to talk to her only remaining child. The book may wallow slightly here, but establishing Serin's misery is essential to drive her to her desperate letter. Then she goes to the Rainfall Market and encounters her first Dokkaebi, and with him the start of her real adventure; just being willing to trust him is her first test on the way to the Rainfall Market, the first of many challenges she'll face.
These Korean spirits are bigger than people (usually), with disproportionate arms and legs, and they steal things like memories or worries or even the impulse to keep clean on vacation from humans, turning these emotions into magical items. They have shades of faerie about them, with their fascination with humans as playthings of a sort, their bargains and trickery and temptations, and their secret ways and rivalries that can threaten any mortal caught up in them, only they tend to be more silly than traditional fae.
Serin knows none of this, of course; she's just a desperate girl, willing to follow a strange, childlike giant figure into an impossible city just for a chance to not keep living a life that feels unbearable. She soon realizes that her misery really does seem special; she alone got a golden Ticket while most everyone got Silver, and she alone is invited by the host to a special meeting, where she's given special privileges and advantages as she seeks out a magic Orb that will fix her life. Then she's off through the city of the Rainfall Market, visiting a string of peculiar Dokkaebi shops and shopkeepers and performing good deeds and tasks that see her rewarded beyond the simple purchasing of an Orb. Each Orb offers her a glimpse into another life that seems to give her what she wants, until she sees that everything she thought would bring her happiness can also lead to misery and sorrow to rival her own. Still, she takes a little too long figuring out the Lesson the Orbs are spelling out in bright rainbow letters (this is part of what makes me wonder about the target age, as this reads so young I'd be tempted to call it a children's story, not even middle-grade), while shadows lurk behind her and some unknown plot between the Dokkaebi plays out around her adventures. Eventually, of course, the short rainy season must end, but will Serin have found a better life before it's too late to return home, or will she miss out on this unique opportunity?
You can probably guess about how things unfold; I mentioned earlier that it's somewhat predictable, playing out like a video game in which Serin has to complete simple puzzles and challenges before passing through each level, gathering Orbs and other items that, naturally, will prove useful at the endgame. But even with that said, it's generally a good-hearted story, with some solid emotions and fun imagery.

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