The Memory Hunters
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
Inception meets Indiana Jones in this cinematic, slow burn, romantic, fantasy adventure 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. A sapphic, dark academia-adjacent, climate dystopia -- with mushrooms -- for readers of Blood Over Bright Haven, A Memory Called Empire, and Ink Blood Sister Scribe.
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.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Tsai (Bitter Medicine) opens the Consecrated series by overlaying a tense political thriller onto a vividly rendered dystopian landscape. Archaeologist Kiana "Key" Strade is skilled at diving into others' long-lost memories using blood chalice mushrooms. Her loyalties are torn between the Temple led by her mother and the information-hoarding curators of the Institute of Human Memory, for which she's chosen to work. When she takes on an unauthorized memory-seeking expedition, she uncovers an intriguing bit of ancient ritual history that she feels the ancestors want her to further pursue. Valerian, the guardian assigned to protect Key during her dives and confirm that she comes neatly out of the experience of inhabiting others' memories, balances the responsibilities of her role, her personal fondness for Key, and the impact of supporting Key's transgressions on her own ability to provide for her family in their stormy, climate change–ravaged home. Tsai subtly brings the details of a brutal world to light across two distinctly different social milieux: the formal manipulations of Key's family and colleagues, and the jocular if violent world of Valerian and her fellow guardians. The result works both as postapocalyptic adventure and a meditation on the nature of history, told with remarkable richness and depth.
