Redheaded Jill

I have been waiting for this book for ages and it finally came out this summer. I think I pre-ordered it several months ago. It took me about three days of consistent reading to get her finished and WOW was it worth it.

June Her writes Korean Historical Fiction. This novel was based on the true story of a tyrant king of abducted more than 1,000 women from across the land and made them his unofficial concubines. Though she changed the timeline and altered some characters a great deal of it was true history.

The story follows two sisters who have an argument. The older sister runs out of the house, straight into the king who is making his rounds and is abducted. The younger sister, Iseul, then travels alone through forest and forbidden territory to get to the capital to find her older sister. Along the way Iseul meets several people who are unhappy with the tyrant king and they form a sort of alliance.

*SPOILERS GOING FORWARD*

Her new friends are a illegitimate brother to the king who has his own vendetta, a woman who runs and inn and is only kept safe from the king because she has a scar across her face, an old scholar/detective and a court jester. They meet when they come across a dead body with a message painted on his robe to taunt the king. There is a serial killer who is killing people in connection to the king.
Iseul thinks if she catches the killer she can trade the killer’s identity for the safe return of her sister. As time goes on they make guesses as to who the killer is. Iseul sneaks into the palace and makes contact with her sister. She falls in love with the illegitimate Prince Daehyun, and helps plan a coup. (It should be noted that Iseul is an orphan, her parents were killed by the tyrant king years before this story takes place and she is living under a false identity.)

Just when you think the heroes are going to easily get away with their plan things go awry (of course). They get Iseul’s uncle and several officials to join their plot only to find out he is the reason her parents were killed. Then, instead of promising to release the 1000+ women prisoners of the king they find out the corrupt officials plan to give the women away as gifts for those who support the coup and new government. When Iseul finds this out she sneaks into the palace as one of the king’s women. Then when the rebels attack the palace she leads 100 women (including her sister) out a back gate to escape the rebels. She tells them what the rebels are planning and has to rescue her sister from one particularly disgusting official she nicknames “The Maggot”.

The ending is bittersweet (I won’t give it away completely) but the women who have been so beaten and broken down by the king continue to be mistreated in the new government. Those who don’t escape become concubines or mistresses of the new officials. Those who do return home are more often than not rejected and looked down on by their families and villages. Iseul’s own grandmother refuses to welcome her sister back home, so they get jobs at the Inn where the coup started.

One interesting thing is that despite the corruption and tyranny of the rulers there is a protected class of official, historians, who write down literally EVERYTHING that happens and records it for historical purposes. There is no way to change it, alter it, or keep it from being recorded. (There is a K drama about this very topic with Cha Eun Woo of Astro, called “Female Historian” or something like that. It’s a decent drama.)

Another interesting thing is how little control the new king had after the coup. The real people in control were the politicians who overthrew him. Unfortunately most of them were corrupt. One man in particular was based on a historical figure who kept a huge number of the tyrant king’s former concubines and built a house for them on his own property. The burden fell onto the poor to make up for the taxes that the wealthy were excused from paying as a reward for deposing the former king.

There was a belief that a ruler was divinely chosen by Heaven, so staging a coup was a big deal. And at the end of it all, even though it was his idea to begin with, the illegitimate prince who did NOT want to take control of the throne, was hunted down and forced to go into hiding from the same men he recruited to join the cause.

I loved this book. I read it for several hours floating in my parent’s pool. It was a highlight of my summer and I can’t wait to read June Hur’s other published works.