Watching a talented writer take a risk is one of the pleasures of devoted reading, and On Such a Full Sea provides all that and more. It's a wonderful addition not only to Chang-rae Lee's body of work but to the ranks of "serious" writers venturing into the realm of dystopian fantasy…Lee has always been preoccupied by the themes of hope and betrayal, by the tensions that arise in small lives in the midst of great social change. His marvelous new book…takes on those concerns with his customary mastery of quiet detail—and a touch of the fantastic…A reader hoping for weird mutants and wild conflagrations has picked up the wrong book; Lee's influence is more Philip Roth than Philip K. Dick. Although he peppers On Such a Full Sea with some genre pleasures…Fan's journey through a mysterious future turns out to be a timeless exploration of the human condition.

Publishers Weekly

? 12/09/2013

Lee's (The Surrendered) latest novel is set in a dystopic future world in which the cities of Detroit and Baltimore are now facilities, called B-Mor and D-Troy by their residents, all of whom are of Asian descent. These city dwellers spend their lives in happy serfdom, working day jobs to produce goods (mostly food) for the richer Charter communities. But when Fan, an unassuming 16-year-old with a talent for diving, abandons B-Mor in search of her vanished boyfriend, Reg, the fabric of orderly B-Mor begins to fray. Lee tells the story of Fan's quest, from the facilities to the open counties (lawless places where Fan's unwavering purpose and childlike demeanor are the only things that protect her), and, finally, to a Charter called Seneca. The narrator is the collective voice of B-Mor, who often interrupts Fan's journey with digressions on the nature of legends and the impossibility of any story surviving, unaltered, the whims of the teller. It's an engrossing read, and Lee's skills as a world builder of the finest order are evident in every chapter. Late in the second half of the book, Fan is temporarily imprisoned with a group of kept girls. All of their eyes are altered to resemble those of anime characters, and they're trapped in a white dormitory, where they magic-marker their histories onto the wall. Lee's descriptions of their images—which start as truth and then careen into a fantastic blend of imagination and interpretation—are beautiful metaphors for the way stories take on lives of their own. (Jan.)

The Boston Globe

Genius… With this strange and magically grim book, Chang-rae Lee has allowed us to leave the familiar behind, all so we can see it more clearly.

Chicago Tribune

[On Such a Full Sea is] not just a fully realized, time-jumping narrative of an audacious young girl in search of lost loved ones, but an exploration of the meaning and function of narrative, of illusion and delusion, of engineered personalities and faint promises of personhood, and of one powerful nation's disappearance and how that indelibly affects another.

The Huffington Post

[Lee] writes with language that is impassioned and inventive.

NPR - Ella Allfrey

[Lee] demonstrates once again that he is a writer of great imagination and stylistic elegance…Towards the end of the story, when there is a reunion and a betrayal and the reader would surely be justified in expecting a neat conclusion — there are only more tantalizing questions. Here, for me, is Lee's mastery — On Such a Full Sea is a book that involves the reader fully in the act of telling the story. There was no point at which I felt I was merely a passive listener and this is a rare experience.

Washington Post

Hypnotic…a haunting critique of a spiritually stunted community kept satisfied with basic comforts and the promise of protection from a threatening world…Once again, Lee creates an impossibly foreign world, and with his muted, elegiac voice shows us living there. It's a brilliant, deeply unnerving portrait that might even distract you for a moment when you're battling a svelte yoga fanatic at Whole Foods for the last bag of organically grown quinoa. Run, Fan, run.