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Sublimation
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Sublimation is the debut novel by Isabel J. Kim, winner of two Nebula Awards, the Locus Award, the British Science Fiction Award, and the Shirley Jackson Award, and a finalist for the 2025 Hugo Award and 2023 Astounding Award.
The border cuts you in two.
When you immigrate, you leave a copy of yourself behind. One person enters their new country, the other stays trapped at home.
Some instances keep in touch, call each other daily, keep their lives and minds in sync in the hopes of reintegrating and resuming a life as one person. Others, like Soyoung Rose Kang, leave home at ten and never speak to their other selves again. Rose, in America, never imagined going back to Korea until her grandfather dies and her Korean instance calls her home for the funeral. When she arrives, she discovers that Soyoung plans to steal her body and live her life whether Rose wants to reintegrate or not.
Sublimation is a literary speculative fiction novel that pits the lives we choose against the lives we leave behind. It’s an immigrant story like no other, capturing the longing for another life and twisting it into a dangerous game of cat-and-mouse.
The border cuts you in two.
When you immigrate, you leave a copy of yourself behind. One person enters their new country, the other stays trapped at home.
Some instances keep in touch, call each other daily, keep their lives and minds in sync in the hopes of reintegrating and resuming a life as one person. Others, like Soyoung Rose Kang, leave home at ten and never speak to their other selves again. Rose, in America, never imagined going back to Korea until her grandfather dies and her Korean instance calls her home for the funeral. When she arrives, she discovers that Soyoung plans to steal her body and live her life whether Rose wants to reintegrate or not.
Sublimation is a literary speculative fiction novel that pits the lives we choose against the lives we leave behind. It’s an immigrant story like no other, capturing the longing for another life and twisting it into a dangerous game of cat-and-mouse.
368 pages, Hardcover
Expected publication June 2, 2026
7446 people want to read
About the author
Isabel J. Kim
30 books86 followersIsabel J. Kim lives near New York City in an apartment filled with books and swords. She is the author of numerous short stories and has won the Nebula, Locus, BSFA and the Shirley Jackson Awards. Her work has been translated into multiple languages and reprinted in multiple best of the year anthologies. When she’s not writing, she’s practicing law or podcasting. Find her at isabel.kim or @isabel.kim on Bluesky.
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
November 18, 2025
11/18/25: I just read the first POV segment last night, and waiting for the paper ARC in January/February so I can more fully engage with The Text (TM) is going to test my patience like nothing else. I (don't) apologize in advance for what a complete freak I'm going to be about this whole book. Second person writing? One great worldbuilding device with deep thematic implications? Emotions simmering just under the surface? She can't keep getting away with this.
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The author's debut short story that this is based on absolutely slaps and you should read it immediately to acquaint yourself with this universe: "Homecoming is Just Another Word for the Sublimation of the Self"
I made a bunch of unhinged screaming noises when I saw the news that Isabel J. Kim had a book and media deal (Sci-Fi Novel ‘Sublimation’ Lands At Universal International Studios For TV Adaptation), but look, it's only because she's a genius and I have great taste.
Do we have a release date orany character names character details yet? Irrelevant. I can't wait to dive in.
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The author's debut short story that this is based on absolutely slaps and you should read it immediately to acquaint yourself with this universe: "Homecoming is Just Another Word for the Sublimation of the Self"
I made a bunch of unhinged screaming noises when I saw the news that Isabel J. Kim had a book and media deal (Sci-Fi Novel ‘Sublimation’ Lands At Universal International Studios For TV Adaptation), but look, it's only because she's a genius and I have great taste.
The book is set in a world where a process called “instancing” splits a person into two distinct copies: one who migrates and one who remains. The story unfolds when a woman who migrated returns to Seoul and must face her other self, while her childhood friend’s New York self draws her into a conspiracy to control the future of instancing, bringing both versions of him back into her life with global repercussions.
Do we have a release date or
2026
November 14, 2025ANHPI TBR
📱 Thank you to NetGalley and Tor Books
📱 Thank you to NetGalley and Tor Books
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April 24, 2025A big thank you to the author and publisher for an eARC of the book for a blurb!!
SUBLIMATION is an odyssey of choices and regrets, of people who would be and never were but also are, all at once, exploring immigration and separation, diaspora and the resulting split identities of cultural interweaving—both willing and unwilling. Kim masterfully blends the experimental and straight forward, jarring yet familiar, philosophical and theoretical, while exanimating placelessness and fractured identity through multilayered narratives. I have never felt more seen by a book in my life.
SUBLIMATION is an odyssey of choices and regrets, of people who would be and never were but also are, all at once, exploring immigration and separation, diaspora and the resulting split identities of cultural interweaving—both willing and unwilling. Kim masterfully blends the experimental and straight forward, jarring yet familiar, philosophical and theoretical, while exanimating placelessness and fractured identity through multilayered narratives. I have never felt more seen by a book in my life.
December 12, 2025
This was an absolute joy to read.
If you haven’t read the short story it’s based on, I highly recommend checking it out. If you like it, it’ll get you excited for the novel. If not…well, it’s a good representation of the style https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/kim_...
This book does a wonderful job digging into the personal character moments. The second-person keeps the reader close while also providing something of a dislocation effect, as it stars characters who are constantly wondering whether their lives would’ve been better if they’d taken the other branch of big life decisions. It’s that internal turmoil that provides the biggest interpersonal conflicts and the true emotional heart of the story.
There’s also a thriller plot that builds over the course of the story and takes center stage in the fourth act. I’m personally biased against thriller plots, so your mileage may vary, but I don’t think it’s exceptional here—it struggles to motivate the kind of world-shaking stakes that the characters feel it has.
That said…the quality of the writing and the interpersonal conflict is good enough to make this a five-star read even if the thriller element isn’t top-tier. The climax hits the character notes hard enough that it never feels like they drop into the background, even as the story gets plottier.
It’s a very good book, and an even better debut. I wish I had done a better job of reviewing it. Perhaps I’ll clean this up and try again later. But right now, I’m adding my recommendation to the stack.
17/20
If you haven’t read the short story it’s based on, I highly recommend checking it out. If you like it, it’ll get you excited for the novel. If not…well, it’s a good representation of the style https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/kim_...
This book does a wonderful job digging into the personal character moments. The second-person keeps the reader close while also providing something of a dislocation effect, as it stars characters who are constantly wondering whether their lives would’ve been better if they’d taken the other branch of big life decisions. It’s that internal turmoil that provides the biggest interpersonal conflicts and the true emotional heart of the story.
There’s also a thriller plot that builds over the course of the story and takes center stage in the fourth act. I’m personally biased against thriller plots, so your mileage may vary, but I don’t think it’s exceptional here—it struggles to motivate the kind of world-shaking stakes that the characters feel it has.
That said…the quality of the writing and the interpersonal conflict is good enough to make this a five-star read even if the thriller element isn’t top-tier. The climax hits the character notes hard enough that it never feels like they drop into the background, even as the story gets plottier.
It’s a very good book, and an even better debut. I wish I had done a better job of reviewing it. Perhaps I’ll clean this up and try again later. But right now, I’m adding my recommendation to the stack.
17/20
Want to read
October 10, 2025I’m at NY ComicCon and they brought this book up at a TOR panel and holy hell I AM SO SAT. They pitched it as severance x immigration, so when you emigrate, you essentially sever yourself into two: the person you are in your birth country and person you become in your country of destination. !!! INCREDIBLE !!!
January 3, 2026
4.5/5
this is one of the most unique book concepts i have ever had the pleasure of reading, so thank you to TOR and the author for allowing me to ARC read it.
this book dealt in the controversial and hot button issue of human migration, but made it digestible through a multi-tonal lens—this was a lecture and a retelling of myth as much as it was a linear storyline. this format choice as an approach to understanding such a dense topic really helped write home the themes of identity and exploration of the self in intersection with diaspora in a cross-genre capacity, which felt entirely nuanced. the world as an instanced version of itself takes a LOT of world building and science info dumping to understand, so unveiling that info in small bits chapter by chapter as is convenient for the storyline was a creative way to help the reader grasp the changes between our world and the book’s in a way that didn’t overwhelm. our main characters were raw and unfiltered, even verging on unlikable at times, as a strong commentary on the human condition, internal conflict, and the impact of choice. i have always appreciated books surrounding the dismantling of corporate overlords and corrupt government organizations by way of subterfuge and whistleblowing, and this book definitely hit the nail on the head there. there wasn’t much i didn’t love about this one outside of the slow start. it took me a while to really lock in and care about the characters as they were being presented and to feel like i knew and cared about them. it wasn’t until we got to know YJ better that i felt like the story really started for me, and i almost wish he/yujin would have been our introductory main characters instead of soyoung/rose as i found them a little one-toned.
i really loved this one and think it’s going to be massive once it releases in june. very high hopes for isabel j kim in her debut novel—this one definitely impressed!
this is one of the most unique book concepts i have ever had the pleasure of reading, so thank you to TOR and the author for allowing me to ARC read it.
this book dealt in the controversial and hot button issue of human migration, but made it digestible through a multi-tonal lens—this was a lecture and a retelling of myth as much as it was a linear storyline. this format choice as an approach to understanding such a dense topic really helped write home the themes of identity and exploration of the self in intersection with diaspora in a cross-genre capacity, which felt entirely nuanced. the world as an instanced version of itself takes a LOT of world building and science info dumping to understand, so unveiling that info in small bits chapter by chapter as is convenient for the storyline was a creative way to help the reader grasp the changes between our world and the book’s in a way that didn’t overwhelm. our main characters were raw and unfiltered, even verging on unlikable at times, as a strong commentary on the human condition, internal conflict, and the impact of choice. i have always appreciated books surrounding the dismantling of corporate overlords and corrupt government organizations by way of subterfuge and whistleblowing, and this book definitely hit the nail on the head there. there wasn’t much i didn’t love about this one outside of the slow start. it took me a while to really lock in and care about the characters as they were being presented and to feel like i knew and cared about them. it wasn’t until we got to know YJ better that i felt like the story really started for me, and i almost wish he/yujin would have been our introductory main characters instead of soyoung/rose as i found them a little one-toned.
i really loved this one and think it’s going to be massive once it releases in june. very high hopes for isabel j kim in her debut novel—this one definitely impressed!
November 6, 2025
🫧 SUBLIMATION by Isabel J. Kim
Out June 2, 2026 | @TOR
Literary Speculative Fiction • Diaspora • Dual Identity
“When you immigrate, you leave a copy of yourself behind.”
What a concept. What a book. What a world. 🌏
Isabel J. Kim’s Sublimation is an existential fever dream. It's a story of immigration, identity, and the dangerous longing to reclaim what we’ve left behind.
When Rose crosses the border from Korea to America, another version of her, Soyoung, stays behind. Years later, a funeral forces their worlds to collide, and what begins as grief unravels into a haunting game of mirrors and survival.
This debut is speculative fiction at its sharpest with equal parts psychological thriller, diaspora myth, and meditation on belonging. Kim writes with the precision of a scalpel and the ache of a poet. Every sentence hums with questions of who we are when the border splits us in two.
✨ Themes:
🌗 Immigration & identity
🩸 Split selves / doppelgänger tension
💔 Cultural dissonance & memory
🧬 Philosophical sci-fi + literary prose
🌌 Korean diaspora / speculative reflection
For readers who love Ling Ma, Carmen Maria Machado, and Kazuo Ishiguro, Sublimation will absolutely destroy you ... beautifully.
#Sublimation #IsabelJKim #LiterarySpeculativeFiction #DiasporaStories #ImmigrantNarrative #SpeculativeFiction #BookishCommunity #FictionRecs #Bookstagram #AsianAuthors #SciFiMeetsLiterary #UpcomingRelease #BookishLove #LocusAwardWinner #NebulaWinner #MustRead2026 #DualIdentity #TORPublishing
Out June 2, 2026 | @TOR
Literary Speculative Fiction • Diaspora • Dual Identity
“When you immigrate, you leave a copy of yourself behind.”
What a concept. What a book. What a world. 🌏
Isabel J. Kim’s Sublimation is an existential fever dream. It's a story of immigration, identity, and the dangerous longing to reclaim what we’ve left behind.
When Rose crosses the border from Korea to America, another version of her, Soyoung, stays behind. Years later, a funeral forces their worlds to collide, and what begins as grief unravels into a haunting game of mirrors and survival.
This debut is speculative fiction at its sharpest with equal parts psychological thriller, diaspora myth, and meditation on belonging. Kim writes with the precision of a scalpel and the ache of a poet. Every sentence hums with questions of who we are when the border splits us in two.
✨ Themes:
🌗 Immigration & identity
🩸 Split selves / doppelgänger tension
💔 Cultural dissonance & memory
🧬 Philosophical sci-fi + literary prose
🌌 Korean diaspora / speculative reflection
For readers who love Ling Ma, Carmen Maria Machado, and Kazuo Ishiguro, Sublimation will absolutely destroy you ... beautifully.
#Sublimation #IsabelJKim #LiterarySpeculativeFiction #DiasporaStories #ImmigrantNarrative #SpeculativeFiction #BookishCommunity #FictionRecs #Bookstagram #AsianAuthors #SciFiMeetsLiterary #UpcomingRelease #BookishLove #LocusAwardWinner #NebulaWinner #MustRead2026 #DualIdentity #TORPublishing
November 10, 2025
Sublimation is one of the most powerful debut novels I've ever had the pleasure to read. It began blowing my mind from the first page as it explores self and the way memory and experience shapes us. It's about diaspora and regret and longing.
In this version of our world, when you cross a border you have a chance of instatiating -- ie becoming two versions of yourself. One who goes and one who stays. Becoming an Instance is like quantum mechanics in human form. Throughout the book, we get glimpses of the way instances have been woven into the history of the world with excerpts of folk tales, the Odyssey and Genesis. And all of that is before we get to the deeply human POV characters.
I started recommending this book before I was finished with it and then Isabel stuck the landing. Holy cow. It's so good.
In this version of our world, when you cross a border you have a chance of instatiating -- ie becoming two versions of yourself. One who goes and one who stays. Becoming an Instance is like quantum mechanics in human form. Throughout the book, we get glimpses of the way instances have been woven into the history of the world with excerpts of folk tales, the Odyssey and Genesis. And all of that is before we get to the deeply human POV characters.
I started recommending this book before I was finished with it and then Isabel stuck the landing. Holy cow. It's so good.
Review of advance copy received from Publisher
baby's first ARC!
proper review to come when I have a chance to sit down and really savor the paper ARC I have coming in January (thanks Tor!) but look: I love everything Kim writes, a story that turned Homecoming is Just Another Word for the Sublimation of the Self into the first 20% of a novel was always going to be my jam, and for now I'm just here to say that Sublimation delivers. I want everybody to read this book.
proper review to come when I have a chance to sit down and really savor the paper ARC I have coming in January (thanks Tor!) but look: I love everything Kim writes, a story that turned Homecoming is Just Another Word for the Sublimation of the Self into the first 20% of a novel was always going to be my jam, and for now I'm just here to say that Sublimation delivers. I want everybody to read this book.
Read
July 27, 2025FUCKING FANTASTIC.
Elite storytelling!! Kim's writing is stellar. Her world is so fleshed out and smart. So real.
Utterly stunning. I want all the stories in this world. All the fanfiction. All the canonical stories. All the spinoffs. All the official optioned episodes.
What a world. What a concept. What a book.
Fucking amazing.
Elite storytelling!! Kim's writing is stellar. Her world is so fleshed out and smart. So real.
Utterly stunning. I want all the stories in this world. All the fanfiction. All the canonical stories. All the spinoffs. All the official optioned episodes.
What a world. What a concept. What a book.
Fucking amazing.
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
4.5 ⭐
Wow. I feel like I need to read this again to fully grasp this story. I adore the storytelling of this, especially the way biblical and mythological stories and themes are woven into the main story. There are so many things left unanswered, and so much more to be explored in this world. Also....can we talk about that epilogue???
Wow. I feel like I need to read this again to fully grasp this story. I adore the storytelling of this, especially the way biblical and mythological stories and themes are woven into the main story. There are so many things left unanswered, and so much more to be explored in this world. Also....can we talk about that epilogue???
Want to read
December 1, 2025June 2026 release date.
I have loved Isabel J. Kim's short stories in the past, and I really want a copy of this book...
I have loved Isabel J. Kim's short stories in the past, and I really want a copy of this book...
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews