It’s time for another book club! All discussions will take place within this home thread that will be updated each week with the current week number. So, make sure you use spoiler tags and indicate which part of the book you are going to refer to ahead of the tag to show respect to your follow-readers an any possible late-comers.
Summary
돌이켜 보면 같은 삶은 없었다. 새로운 인연을 만나면 새로운 삶이 시작되었다!” 우리 신화와 옛이야기에서 탄생한 매력적인 K 판타지 위즈덤하우스의 청소년 문학 시리즈 ‘텍스트 T’의 첫 권으로 김혜정 작가의 신작 장편소설 『오백 년째 열다섯』이 출간되었다. 단군 신화와 우리 옛이야기에서 탄생한 야호족과 호랑족의 참신한 세계관, 두 족속이 최초 구슬을 두고 벌이는 구슬 전쟁이라는 흥미진진한 스토리, 그리고 오백 년을 열다섯으로 살아온 여자아이라는 독보적인 캐릭터가 더해져 전 세대가 읽을 수 있는 몰입감 넘치는 한국형 판타지가 탄생했다. 또한 ‘오늘의 만화상’ 『연의 편지』로 사랑받았던 조현아 작가가 일러스트로 참여해 여우에서 인간이 된 야호족과 범에서 인간이 된 호랑족의 세계를 매력적으로 보여 준다.
English Summary
“Looking back, my life was never the same. With each new connection, a new life began!” A charming K-fantasy born from our myths and old stories As the first volume of Wisdom House’s young adult literature series, Text T, Kim Hye-jung’s new novel, Fifteen in the Five Hundredth Year, has been published. The novel world of the Yaho and Tiger tribes, created from the Dangun mythology and Korean folklore, the exciting story of the marble war between the two tribes for the first marble, and the unique character of a girl who has lived for five hundred years and fifteen, create an immersive Korean fantasy that can be read by all generations. The book is illustrated by Cho Hyun-ah, who was beloved for her Manga of the Day award-winning “Letters from Yon,” and offers a fascinating look at the world of the fox-turned-human Yaho people and the panther-turned-human Tiger people.
Reading Schedule
Note: The table below is a placeholder and will be updated with the chapters and page numbers once I have them.
We have a thread! I will be purchasing a copy of the book this week and will look at the chapters to create a schedule. The book has 220 pages so we are looking at around ~20 pages a week if the chapter lengths support it. Does anyone have a copy already?
Yes I have the ebook. My page numbers might be off (217 pages here in my copy)…but a lot of chapters seem to be around ten pages, some are less and some are more though.
I now have a copy of the book so I went in and made my best attempt at a schedule. After breaking the chapters apart into fairly equal lengths of around 20 pages, I came up at 9 weeks instead of 10, so we will end up with a shorter schedule if everyone is ok with it. I added the approximate page count to the table (take it with a grain of salt, though, since it’s just me guess-timating based on the page count in RIDI).
If anyone has any objections, please don’t hesitate to let me know! We could also go for a slower schedule with less pages per week.
Also, will anyone be reading a physical copy and want the page numbers for each chapter in the schedule table?
I enjoyed the beginning of the book! I look forward to seeing how the god and his friends from the prologue, the main character and her family members, and the boy in the main character’s class are connected. It seems like he’s the only non-family character besides the leader of the foxes that’s been singled out so far.
This seems like a pretty accessible read for me, as the fantasy vocab has been quite minimal and the grammar isn’t that complicated. I look forward to reading more!
Fun start! I started this early, at that point I did feel a little lost about all the gumiho lore, but thankfully I just watched Tale of the nine tailed so I feel a little better lol. I read a lot of wiki about the beings mentioned so I’m curious where the story will go- esp with the desk buddy boy.
Also, I decided I spend too much time reading extensively so I’m going to try and search up every word Im not 100% sure about lol. RIP me, but I really need to start actually knowing vocab and not just going with vibes skskkssk. If you want to preview vocab or see what I found about certain terms the link is here 오백 년째...vocab - Google Sheets
it’s all the chapters so be wary of spoilers if you go ahead of what you’re reading I guess. I’ll be updating it as I go.
(spoilers for week 1&2)
this is pretty fun so far. I like that we’re introduced to the characters 500 years after the exciting magic part happened to them and instead of being super special and exciting their lives are actually super boring. It’s a nice twist on the classic “special magical girl” trope.
Also very cute that her mum and grandma are so excited to go to school for the first time.
Also appreciate that even for a book aimed at youngsters the author didn’t just lazily info-dump the backstory upfront but made an effort to incorporate it more into the flow of the story.
general thoughts for the plot: hopefully the 호랑족 turn out to be more interesting then just straight up baddies.
week 3 down, the plot is pretty slow in this one but it’s such a chill little read i’m not really minding it. I do want to know more about the 야호 though.
Can 가을 and her mum and grandma turn into foxes? outside of their general short-term transformation ability i mean. i feel like they mentioned it and i just forgot.
this week made me google to read the story of 콩쥐팥쥐, it is unhinged. google if you’re not familiar.
Week 3
Yeah I’m finding it a little hard to get into it. It kind of annoys me how immature the MC is. And how her grandmother and mother act exactly as they did when they were humans. MC mentions her years and years of wisdom so why doesn’t she act more mature…? Like her family all have lived pretty similar life spans in the grand scheme of things. Though maybe her inability to experience things like college or working, marrying etc. has limited her. Idk.
We have some new characters, which will be interesting. I keep forgetting who is a girl and who is a boy lol. I think the introduction of 휴 and 령 means that things will ramp up. I’m so curious about how the bad guys will come to play. Will they all transfer to the school from some far away place? Lol. Or will the three sisters have to fight to save the world in the evenings after they 하교해 while also juggling schoolwork?
I also saw this exists as an audiobook. I really want to be lazy and just listen to it, but since I’m reading this intensively I really shouldn’t haha. Given by the number of words I’m looking up, I really need to improve my vocab. Maybe once I read it all I’ll give it a listen…
My thoughts so far: I agree with ddochii, it’s nice to see some new characters introduced. I’m enjoying the folktales that are interspersed throughout the story and am curious to see how they’ll become relevant later on. I hope that the story gets going soon since we’ve already read 30% of it though! I was expecting more fantasy action, or at least mystery, less monotonous school life.
I will say that I don’t dislike the main character - it makes sense for me that she acts the way she does, considering that she’s been forced into a life and existence that she doesn’t want. In my reading, it seems like her limited life experience outside of eternal adolescence has limited her maturity, not to mention living with the same two people for 500 years and staying in their respective familial roles. I hope that she’s able to make friends and find some happiness by the end of the story, or maybe even become human again instead of being miserable all the time. Also, I find her grandma and her mom to be kind of annoying so I get her frustration with them.
Okay, I’ve now read 2/3 chapters for week 4 and I think I have to admit that this book just isn’t working for me. Very little has happened despite reading over 80 pages and I’m not particularly optimistic that it’s going to improve, so I’m going to bow out of this one.
i’ve been sick past couple weeks and haven’t managed to fit this in with my other immersion .
I’m gonna make a point to a least catch up with weeks 4 and 5. if it’s still slow I think i’ll probs just binge read the rest of it. It’s good extensive reading practice for me since adult novels aren’t quite in the extensive zone for me yet.
I read a little ahead. I keep feeling like things are going to happen…but yeah. More background and lore though!
Week 6
I’m still super sus of Yoojung lol but I suppose I believe her. I’m more annoyed no one else found her suspicious despite knowing they need to be super careful these days.
I knew Sinu had to be someone important but I’m glad he’s not a bad guy.
I really liked finally getting to know MC’s background and story in the past few chapters. Idk if I missed it in the beginning but I didn’t realize she was half-half lol. But also, she can disguise herself as older, right? Like she did when following Yoojung. Is she just not old/strong enough to do it for long? Why doesn’t she do that like her family disguises themselves as young for school? Since she hates being a middle schooler so much. Idk, maybe it’s mentioned and I missed it lol.
I’m truly excited for anything to happen. I need some action. We’re 70 percent in and I feel like the pace and story are still the same slow speed
가을은 책 중에서 특히 소설을 좋아한다. 소설 속 세계는 가을을 어디로든 데려다준다.
The irony of her saying this considering she’s taken us as far as the school classroom in this book
가을 be out here remembering people she met decades ago, imma forget your face and name as you’re introducing yourself to me.
I feel like they could have made more plot out of the paying people back for favours thing. Then it could have been more action based while you got to know the characters and their world…and be less floating around haunting the classroom and her house endlessly. it’s giving 또다시 같은 꿈을 구었어 for reals
Age. difference.
The inherent horror of having to live your teenage life forever. This girls existence is my idea of hell.
This is like the highschool version of Only Lovers Left Alive.
I went ahead and finished the rest of the book and the pacing was so weird
some language things I noticed:
“가을은 할머니, 엄마와 휴, 령과 함께 일주일간 지리산에서 지냈다.” Interesting listing format in this sentence.
Why was 유정 calling the 봄 ‘형님’? Isn’t 유정 female? I went back to the character sheet… absolutely no help Is it just a callout to the original folktale or am I missing something obvious?
카메라 울렁증 = camera shy (presumably from 울렁이다)
견우직녀 - reference to 견우와 직녀 the forbidden love story of the weaver girl and the cowheard which is the origin of the 칠석 festival. (which is on 10-Aug this year, next weekend!)
They really made us sit in the classroom for 150 pages then all the plot happened.
I liked that the author incorporated a lot of history and folklore into the characters but I felt like it could have been better done and tied together more.
I don’t expect the same out of YA I do from an adult novel but just because your audience is teenagers doesn’t mean they have low standards. This should have been a first draft honestly. The first half could have had less exposition and had more of the characters interacting in a way that introduced you to them and explained the situation naturally. Like the grandma accidentally continually reffering to the past or the paying back favours thing. Or the second half shouldn’t have been so rushed so we spent as much time on the conflict as on the lore.
Not sure if you figured this out, but 형님 is not a strictly gendered term. It’s usually used in 지방 and by mostly older people from what I’ve seen. It’s just a respectful term to call older people in this case (if you have a close relationship). I hear it a lot in Jeju haha.
From Korean Dict: 나이가 많은 친한 여자들 사이에서 나이가 적은 사람이 나이가 많은 사람을 이르거나 부르는 말.
I will be purchasing a copy of the book this week and will look at the chapters to create a schedule. The book has 220 pages so we are looking at around ~20 pages a week if the chapter lengths support it. Does anyone have a copy already? 
I added the approximate page count to the table (take it with a grain of salt, though, since it’s just me guess-timating based on the page count in RIDI).
.
