Here's a book that's almost impossible not to like. It's light and fluffy, the thrust of the story has a universal appeal and it's packed full of whimsy in the eastern style. This sort of thing is showing up all over anime and live action TV from Japan, China and Korea and it's glorious to read an example in prose. The only catch for me, personally, is that it's YA rather than adult; so the darkness is never as dark as it could be, missing out on bite, and the depth isn't as substantial or as emotional as the equivalent would be if written for adults.

But that's fine. I won't review the book this isn't. I'll review the book that this is.

The central conceit is the Rainfall Market of the title, which is populated by Dokkaebi, who aren't explained here until the page of discussion points at the end of the book which calls them goblins. I initially assumed them to be a Korean equivalent of our fae, but they tend to function as nature gods or spirits who have magical powers that they use to either help or trick humans. That they're usually translated as goblins isn't entirely helpful because they don't share all the typical western attributes of goblins.

To humans, the Rainfall Market is a place to exchange their misfortune for better lives, close to as universal a theme as any book gets. Whoever we are and whatever our station in life, things could be better or, at least, we think so whenever we want something that we can't have, whatever that may be. The central question of the book, posed both to Korean schoolgirl Kim Serin and to we the readers, is that, if we could choose a perfect life for ourselves, what would it be?

There's a mythical structure around this. You have to acquire a ticket, for a start, which Serin does by writing down all her misfortunes down and mailing them to a certain address, as recommended in the pages of 'Secrets of the Rainfall Market', a bestseller she reads in her school library. If you are lucky enough to get a ticket, you have to travel to Rainbow Town and present it at a particular house on the very first day of the rainy season.  If you meet all of those criteria, the Dokkaebi will let you in and provide you with a basic set of things which you then use to acquire the life that you want.

And, while most of us want something more than we have, however lucky we already are, Serin has a stronger case. Her father has been dead since she was very young, with a battered radio of his as her only friend. Her younger sister is missing, having run away from home some time ago. So she lives with her mother in a neighbourhood so poor that their building is scheduled for demolition. If she has a positive in her life, it's that she studies tae kwon do but she isn't always very good at it. It's therefore not surprising that she get a ticket for her letter, but it's gold and, as she'll discover in the Rainfall Market, everybody else's is silver. She's a sort of VIP this season.

Of course, there are reasons for all these things. She doesn't get a gold ticket just because she's our protagonist. She gets a gold ticket because there's a mystery unfolding in the Rainfall Market this season and, while she knows nothing about that yet, she's there by design to play a part in it. That mystery grows out of nowhere. I'm sure that, if I started the book over again, I'd see hints at where it would go a lot earlier than I did, but that doesn't matter. What matters is that there is a mystery and we stumble into it alongside Serin, while she tries to figure out her new life.

It's the fact that she has a gold ticket that makes this all possible. The first step after entering the Rainfall Market is to exchange your ticket for one or more coins at the Misfortune Pawnshop. The more misfortune you've had, the more coins you get. Some people only get one. Serin gets a heck of a lot of them. Then you visit establishments around the Market to exchange your coin or coins for a Dokkaebi Orb, which contains your new life. If you only have one coin, you only get to see the life in one orb. If you have more, then you can reject it and move on to exchange another coin for another orb at another establishment. And so on.

Serin gets to do that a lot and every time she does a bunch of things happen. For one, she meets a new character and characters in the Rainfall Market are real characters, as the simply illustrated list of them at the beginning of the book shows. She's already met Toriya, the gatekeeper, who's a gentle giant, huge and intimidating but scared of bugs and enamoured by flowers. Every location introduces her to another one, who builds the mystery and the story and the depth of the book. In every establishment, she acquires another orb and looks at the life within it but finds a catch that makes her keep looking. And so we go, rinsing and repeating and building.

Importantly, these characters aren't throwaways, there to be quirky and whimsical in a particular way and then vanish to be replaced by another, because they're all integrally woven into the story on a grander level. On the positive side, that means that each of them says or does something to help Serin as she follows her quest and all of them will return to the story at a later point to play a further part. On the negative side, that makes them all rather conveniently placed.

Frankly, the older and more experienced you are as a reader, the more this is likely to bug you. It's important to remember that this is a YA book that's intended to be read by young people who are on a journey of discovery themselves. They're still figuring out who they are, let alone what they'll want out of life, that good old chestnut of what they want to be when they grow up. They aren't as likely to see how deliberate, convenient and overly simplistic this novel is. Instead they'll recognise that its heart is absolutely in the right place and there are moments and lessons to resonate with them as they grow. We old fogies can learn plenty too but we've already made the mistakes Serin has to consider and hopefully learned from them already.

So, if you're an older reader like me who's lived a life and watched kids and grandkids live theirs, it really isn't difficult to notice how fundamentally flimsy this novel is. If Serin chose a different path at any point, then this story would fall apart. If Issha, the magical cat who acts like a dog and acts both as her companion and her guide in the Rainfall Market, didn't take her where she did at any point, then this story would fall apart. If she even missed a realisation, asked a different question or reached a different conclusion at any point, then this story would fall apart.

How much you're going to get out of this book is likely to depend on how much you care about that inherent flaw. If you care, you're going to find problems all over the place. If you don't care, then it might bring a little childhood back to you. If so, maybe you'll appreciate the whimsy of it all, the way that different Dokkaebi create different magical things out of what we discard, like perfumes from the essence of words, hair oil from compliments or meals from forgotten memories. Maybe you'll remember what it was like being as young as Serin, maybe as poor and unfortunate, but see that glimmer of hope that can take you forward.

After all, that's the magic of fantasy and it's all over this book. You Yeong-Gwang is Korean, as you likely expected from his name, and 'The Rainfall Market' was originally published in Korean. What I'm reading is an English translation published in the U.S. by Ace but it's spread across the globe as if You had won a ticket himself and wished to be a successful author. The next step is surely for it to be adapted into visual form, whether as an anime, a comic book or a live action TV show. I'd dearly love to stumble across the latter, because I want to see a rich visualisation of the Rainfall Market and the quirky Dokkaebi who populate it. ~~ Hal C F Astell