Firstly I think for readers it’s important to understand that this is not a autobiography (which is what I thought it would be) it’s exactly what it says on the tin, a record of BTS music career.  It goes through the last 10 years of BTS career and plots the highlights, lowlights and the milestones along the way.  While this inevitably includes some personal antic-dotes and emotional reflections it’s not an in-depth analysis of the member’s histories, experience or motivations.  It makes this distinction quite clearly by referring to the members by their stage names and has a interview style writing of each of their thoughts, combined with a narrative written by the author which plots BTS trajectory over the past 10 years.  It also only briefly touches on solo work, one or two sentences per member.

What did surprise me throughout this was how verbose V and Jin were.  Their comments seemed to carry most of the book, with their memories, details and reflections.  It also surprised me that considering RM and Suga are both writers (song writers) and heavy readers, RM especially, that they didn’t seem to be as heavily involved as V and Jin.  This was just surprising not a negative, I suppose considering how dominant RM and Suga are in interviews or Festas and how quiet  or superficial Jin and V can be in these situations it was nice to hear what they had to say in detail and with such reflection.

I think the real strength of this book is the organisation and detail in which the author and translator wrote the book.  I was able to read this quickly without confusion and with great interest.  It was also lovely to read either new information or old information that didn’t seem like a rehash of BTS origin stories that I had heard multiple times before.  It was also amazing to see what BTS felt were milestones in their career vrs what has been the ARMY narrative.  

Overall this was informative and enjoyable and I knew I was in safe hands with Anton Hur as an exceptional translator.  This is a 4 star and not a 5 star for me because I would have loved more information on the behind the scenes of the music writing, motivation, structure, struggles and creation or recording of the music.  It did touch on it but not in explicit detail and for me that is very much a part of why BTS is successful.  

But I do hope one day to get a BTS or individual biography I thought this was.