THE MEMORY HUNTERS, Tsai's first fantasy novel in The Consecrated series of anti-colonialist sapphic tales

THE MEMORY HUNTERS (The Consecrated #1)
MIA TSAI
Erewhon Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$23.80 ebook, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Inception meets Indiana Jones in this propulsive fungal science fantasy following a headstrong academic and her equally stubborn bodyguard as they unearth an ancient secret that rocks the foundations of their society—and challenges their unspoken love for one another.

Kiana Strade can dive deeper into blood memories than anyone alive. But instead of devoting her talents to the temple she’s meant to lead, Key wants to do research for the Museum of Human Memory. . . and to avoid the public eye.

Valerian IV's twin swords protect Key from murderous rivals and her own enthusiasm alike. Vale cares about Key as a friend—and maybe more—but most of all, she needs to keep her job so she can support her parents and siblings in the storm-torn south.

But when Key collects a memory that diverges from official history, only Vale sees the fallout. Key’s mentor suspiciously dismisses the finding; her powerful mother demands she stop research altogether. And Key, unusually affected by the memory, begins to lose moments, then minutes, then days.

As Vale becomes increasingly entangled in Key’s obsessive drive for answers, the women uncover a shattering discovery—and a devastating betrayal. Key and Vale can remain complicit, or they can jeopardize everything for the truth.

Either way, Key is becoming consumed by the past in more ways than one, and time is running out.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: Memorycelium? Mycelium accumbens? We're gonna need a bigger vocabulary for brain stuff. After this apocalypse, there's now a fungal component to our species, in the form of a mycelial memory-sharing capability.

I'm shuddering convulsively, yet really intrigued; this is not the first fungal horror-tinged sci-fantasy of this millennium. Amatka, T. Kingfisher's What Moves the Dead; decades ago, Anne McCaffrey's Pern novels featured "Thread," the mycorrhizal threat to all Pernese life; the pop-culture phenomenon that is The Last of Us...all using the fungi to bring the scares, to reduce humanity to something fungal's prey or at the least its dependent.

I was also really impressed that Author Tsai didn't use her bullhorn to blare romantasy at me. The women are, um, entwined (it's only now occurring to me how very fungal a lot of romantic metaphors can sound) but are learning to trust instead of falling in lust/love. That comes(!) afterwards, and after a great deal of personal discovery. Vale, solid guardian and uberpractical peasant, learns more than skill with weapons is needed to keep Key, highly pressurized and stressed entitled solipsist that she is, from coming to greater harm. Vale has to learn that Key's social heritage is more than a gilded footstool to climb over everyone else; it requires Key to adhere to certain modes of being that both of them are discovering have costs to their benefits. It's a slow-burn bi awakening, not instaluuuv, and it requires some deep reflection on both their parts, to fully *get* how they fit together.

What else it requires for these women to accept their love bond is Vale's conventional, clearly queer boyfriend's response to the situation. As they become A Couple, Vale and Key aren't frictionlessly gliding into place at each other's side. The family that Vale is supporting with her guardian job over Key has to have precedence over all as she's their support; Key's position in the social, quasi-religious (my take is it really isn't religious in terms I understand, it's more like academic orthodoxy on steroids) order of memory hunters is intensely important and demanding; it's all threatened by multiple axes of the events in the story.

Key's latest memory extraction is such that its details really put the burner on high under the stewpot. This is one strong indicator that this is a series-starting tale. There's a received wisdom about why this world that Key works to uphold through her memory extraction is how it is. Key accidentally makes a discovery that flies in the face of the received wisdom. Hijinks ensue.

And how! Vale has some awful blowback, Key learns (begins to learn anyway) that not everyone is protected by talent and position, they both start pulling on loose threads...we all know how much authoritarians love people asking questions! especially impertinent ones with the word "why" at their core...and, well, there's A Lot going to happen here pretty quick. Just not in this book.

Key's not a bundle of joy to read about. Her entitlement shines bright. It makes her insensitive to Vale's practical needs. Jing, Vale's "boyfriend," just needs to come out already, he's so hot for his own guardian Cal. Vale needs to step up her boundary-setting game big time. She might want to look in a mirror once in a while to see why she's getting attention. But honestly I forgave them all because this is clearly book one in a series. Most all these are scene-setting issues for future resolution.

I was also willing to put the hazy world-building on hold for the same reason. "But WHY" becomes less urgent when you know there will be another book. I'm eager for it. Though if Jing and Cal don't end up together, and if Key's mother the high priestess doesn't get unalived early in the next story, I'm kicking off big time.