STAY ALIVE One day, Zeha wakes up in a hospital with no memory of how he got there. Retracing his steps, he stumbles upon a terrible truth―the city is under attack by otherworldly monsters called the Beom, and at the center of it all is Zeha himself! But thankfully, he does not stand alone. He soon crosses paths with other young men he feels a mysterious connection to. The seven hunters, seemingly brought together by fate, vow to fight to their last breaths, but as the battle grows more and more desperate, they begin to realize the Beom invasion was just the tip of the iceberg… The global K-pop phenomenon BTS gets reimagined as seven brave hunters, but their message of hope remains the same!

7FATES: CHAKHO is written by HYBE with BTS. English translation by WEBTOON. Published by Ize Press. (October 21, 2025).

Rebecca Silverman
Rating:

I need to preface this by saying that I really don't know much about BTS. I like some songs, I'm familiar with how passionate their fanbase is, and in my teaching life, I've even gotten some essays about them. But how they tie into the characters in 7Fates: Chakho I really don't know. However, if you are a fan, there are photos of each of the members in character as the splash page for every chapter, so even if the story doesn't work for you, the novel can function as a de facto photobook. And not a flimsy one, either: this 908 page hardcover behemoth has slick pages, sturdy covers, strong spine, and a purple ribbon bookmark. It's a really nice-looking volume, even if it is too heavy to hold easily.

Somewhat to my surprise, the story is pretty good, too. Taking place in an alternate South Korea, it opens with orphan Zeha meeting Haru at the place where his parents died. Haru is the spirit of a sacred boulder which has separated the worlds of humans and Beom (from an old Korean word for “tiger”) for centuries, and he tells Zeha that his father was Beom, and that they carry a grudge because of his defection…and the fact that humans kept Beom imprisoned for so long. Together Haru and Zeha begin finding ways to fight the Beom, eventually meeting up with five other young men with their own Beom-related circumstances – Jooan was in love with a Beom woman and now has her powers, Cien was swallowed whole by a Beom, Do-geon's family was killed by Beom, and so on. The seven of them band together to form the Beom hunting group Chakho, from an old phrase meaning “tiger hunters.”

The basic plot follows them as they get to know each other and figure out what's really going on in their world. The Beom, like humans, are neither wholly bad nor wholly good, and that goes for other groups of hunters as well. It's all about power and the selfish people who would use it for themselves without caring about the rest of the world, and although it can be quite heavy-handed, it still works on a basic narrative level. As you might expect from official tie-in media, there are some very cheesy moments, like all of the guys realizing that they somehow share the same past life (as a single person), but there's also real effort put into discussing things like prejudice and assumptions about people who are different from you. There's an earnestness underneath the story that shines through.

The length of this book may be its greatest barrier to entry. It's nearly a thousand pages, and almost as long as The Tale of Genji. While I'd still recommend it to BTS fans first and foremost, I think others would enjoy it, too, especially if you like a few homoerotic undertones with your monster hunting.