Moonflow
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3.3 • 4 Ratings
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- $2.99
Publisher Description
"A bizarre and fiercely original splatterpunk phantasmagoria of queerness. Deranged and gleefully weird as f*ck, this is an impressive debut from a singular literary talent." —Eric LaRocca, Bram Stoker Award-nominated author of Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke
Annihilation meets Manhunt in three-time Hugo Award nominee Bitter Karella’s debut horror novel—a gloriously queer and irreverent psychedelic trip into the heart of an eldritch wood and the horrors of (cis)terhood.
I see something out there, in the woods. It does not have a face.
They call it the King’s Breakfast. One bite and you can understand the full scope of the universe; one bite and you can commune with forgotten gods beyond human comprehension. And it only grows deep in the Pamogo forest, where the trees crowd so tight that the forest floor is pitch black day and night, where rumors of disappearing hikers and strange cults that worship the divine feminine abound.
Sarah is a trans woman who makes her living growing mushrooms. When a bad harvest leaves her in a desperate fix, the lure of the King’s Breakfast has her journeying into those vast uncharted woods. But as she descends deeper, she realizes she's not alone. Something in the forest is waking up. It's hungry—and it wants her.
★ “As eldritch and grimy as the terrifying forest it’s set in. I loved this book!" —Trevor Henderson, author of Scarewaves
★ "Weird, wild, and oh-so-wretched, Moonflow is the trans botanical horror we need in the world right now." —Drew Huff, author of The Divine Flesh
★ “Is it legal to have this much fun reading a book? I’m in awe of Karella’s incredible gift for creating biting satire. I had a f*cking blast.” —Joe Koch, Shirley Jackson Award-nominated author of The Wingspan of Severed Hands
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Karella debuts with a hilarious psychedelic orgy of a novel that drips with the kind of pulp nastiness that makes the cheap horror paperbacks of the past so memorable, but updates the aesthetic with a refreshing heroine and a powerful exploration of transmisogyny within queer spaces. Sarah is a broke trans woman growing and selling shrooms to pay her rent. A wealthy client pays her to go into the notoriously dangerous Pamogo Woods to hunt down the King's Breakfast, a powerful hallucinogenic that, when Sarah tries it, gives her visions of a goddess she immediately yearns to meet. But when Sarah and her irritatingly earnest guide venture into the darkened woods, they discover something far more sinister than fungi waiting for them. Karella makes the duo's journey gory and weird enough to satisfy any horror fan, but the real triumph of the book is its wonderfully realized trans heroine. Sarah is smart, funny, and flawed, allowing Karella to organically explore larger ideas about gender and sexuality without losing the irreverent and often comic tone. The result is a strange, sublime truffle that will delight any discerning appetite.
