A Plagued Sea is a Lovecraftian nightmare of infection, transformation, and abomination.
Mark your calendars, LitStackers! A Plagued Sea by Kim Bo-young is in presale (the best time to buy a book), and ready to hit the bookshelves on Aug 11, 2026. Our anticipation is palpable. Published by Tor Nightfire | Macmillan, this Lovecraftian horror novel is already making waves with early readers. Here’s a sneak peek at what’s on the cover from the publisher’s official description to early reviews that will help you pre-order your copy ASAP. Let’s dive in!
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In This Spotlight On A Plagued Sea
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About A Plagued Sea
First the flood
Next the sickness
Last the change
While waiting for a train to Haewon, an isolated Korean seaside village, bodyguard Mu-young gets a disaster alert on her phone. TVs throughout the station report breaking news of a massive earthquake on the eastern coast. Despite the danger, Mu-young boards the train with her niece: she’d rather face the earthquake than leave the girl in her mother’s care. That choice haunts her for the rest of her life.
Three years later, Haewon Village is home to horrors. The earthquake unleashed an plague that transforms its victims into fishy monsters, and the government’s quarantine order has cut off any hope for help. Mu-young’s niece is dead, and all that’s left for her is to hunt villagers who break isolation. When an officious bureaucrat from Seoul arrives in the village, he stirs up even deeper trouble. Will Mu-young survive? Does she even deserve to?
Praise for A Plagued Sea
“Fans of eldritch horrors will find much to love in Kim Bo-young’s elegantly written A Plagued Sea. At once grimace-inducing and hard to look away from, this story of regret, guilt, and transformation will stay with me a long time. Monstrous and very, very human.”—Kendare Blake, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Three Dark Crowns
A Plagued Sea is “…a fresh but completely traditional take on the eldritch terror genre, set against a backdrop of fascinatingly detailed plague and human suffering. Beautifully written and translated, and genuinely gripping.”—Mira Grant, New York Times bestselling author of Overgrowth
“There’s a shadow over the bookshelves with this gelatinous reimagining of Innsmouth. A Plagued Sea conjures up Lovecraftian coastal horrors while luring in fans of Hailey Piper’s own humane monstrosities. There’s a lot of heart below this scaly skin, and it pulses with a fresh empathy that really gets under your gills.”—Clay McLeod Chapman, author of Wake Up and Open Your Eyes
“By turns existentially bleak, delightfully gross, and morbidly humorous, A Plagued Sea packs a great deal of cosmic horror in a small, effective package. For those of you who have been chasing the putrid high of Junji Ito’s Gyo, this is your drug.”—Hiron Ennes, author of Leech
“Profound; modern; and unlike anything else, A Plagued Sea grapples with the current moment and exorcizes the reader. A bit of a masterpiece.”—Paul Cornell, author of the Witches of Lychford series
“A fresh take on Lovecraftian horror. A Plagued Sea is atmospheric and visceral, but with real emotional depth.”—A. C. Wise, author of Out of the Drowning Deep
“Kim Bo-Young’s A Plagued Sea is a smart, gripping variation of Lovecraft’s ‘The Shadow Over Innsmouth,’ telling the story of a small town in Korea transformed by ecological disaster…. This one is a real treat. I want to read more of her stories.”—Nathan Ballingrud, author of The Strange and Crypt of the Moon Spider
About Kim Bo-young, Author of A Plagued Sea
Kim Bo-young is one of Korea’s most unique and important authors. Her first published work of fiction, a novella titled The Experience of Touch, unanimously won the award for the best novella at the Korean Science & Technology Creative Writing Awards in 2004. In 2010 she published a two-volume collection of short stories, The Story Goes That Far and An Evolutionary Myth. 2013 saw the publication of her first novel, The Seven Executioners, which won the South Korean SF Award.
Kim’s work enjoys widespread popularity in Korea and has been praised by award-winning film directors Park Chan-wook and Bong Joon Ho. She acted as a script advisor for Bong’s 2013 film Snowpiercer.
You can connect with Kim Bo-young on Facebook.
Sophie Bowman (translator) grew up in the UK, where she studied social anthropology and Korean. After working and studying in Seoul for seven years, she moved to Toronto for graduate studies in Korean literature. Her translations include Kim Bo-Young’s I’m Waiting for You and Other Stories (co-translated with Sung Ryu), and Whale Snows Down. She also translates books for young readers, including Heena Baek’s Magic Candies and Borders: Meeting Our Neighbors Around the World by Gudol and Haerang.
Source: Publisher
Publisher: Tor Nightfire | Macmillan
ISBN Hardcover 9781250380753
Pub Date Aug 11, 2026
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Other LitStack Resources
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As an affiliate of Bookshop.org, Malaprop’s, Books-A-Million, Audiobooks.com, Chirp, 2nd & Charles, Amazon, NameHero, Envato, and Place-It, LitStack may earn a commission—at no cost to you—when you purchase through our affiliate links. We appreciate the brands we work with, and also appreciate that using our affiliate links may help you find your next great read, a book or two or more, in whatever form, while simultaneously supporting LitStack. When you use our affiliate links, you help keep LitStack running—and for that, we thank you.
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