HP Lovecraft: what if a mushroom came from space
Caitlin Kiernan: what if a mushroom came from space and made zombies
William Hope Hodgeson: what if you hated the sea and everything in it and also there was a mushroom
Junji Ito: what if there were mushrooms in your house
Jeff VanderMeer: what if you stole a mushroom's house
Andrew F. Sullivan: what if the real mushroom was capitalism this whole time
Ursula Vernon: what if mushroom but gothic
Silvia Moreno-Garcia: what if mushroom but gothic and also mexican
Saskia Nislow: what if a mushroom ate your kids
Molly Tanzer: what if you put mushroom in hooch
Bitter Karella: what if you put mushroom in titty milk
Yi Shi Si Zhou: what if you killed a mushroom
Aliya Whiteley: what if you fucked a mushroom
Laura Cranehill: what if you married a mushroom
Moonflow is 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. Answer the call of the forest, if you dare.
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 strange cults and disappearing hikers abound.
Sarah 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. Her only guide is the most annoying man in the world, and he's convinced there's no danger. But as they descend deeper, they realize they're not alone. Something is luring them into the heart of the forest, and they must answer its call.
Read MOONFLOW by Bitter Karella if you love mushrooms and drugs and women and forests and cults and mushrooms and corpses and cats and women and gods and mushrooms and Gender and glitches and transwomen and corpses and blood and f*cking and mushrooms and mushrooms and mushrooms and ...
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. Her only guide is the most annoying man in the world, and he’s convinced there’s no danger. But as they descend deeper, they realize they’re not alone. Something is luring them into the heart of the forest, and they must answer its call.
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 strange cults and disappearing hikers abound.
Sarah 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. Her only guide is the most annoying man in the world, and he's convinced there's no danger. But as they descend deeper, they realize they're not alone. Something is luring them into the heart of the forest, and they must answer its call.
Mod opinion: I've read and quite enjoyed this splatterpunk horror. If you like cult horror and weird forest horror you might enjoy this one too.
Thank you so much to Orbit for this absolutely gorgeous copy of Mᴏᴏɴꜰʟᴏᴡ by Bitter Karella! I’ve been so excited for this book since I first heard about it, and I’m so honored to be given a copy!
With the tagline “A gloriously queer psychedelic trip into the heart of an eldritch wood and the terrors of (cis)terhood” I knew I would love the journey this book would take me on! Queer splatterpunk horror? Sign me up! And that cover? Absolutely gorgeous! 😍
Having just released on the 2nd, this book is the perfect addition to spooky season and I absolutely cannot wait to dive in!
Summary: Desperate for cash, Sarah, who makes her money selling mushrooms, follows her friend’s advice to seek out the King’s Breakfast. Only found in the depths of the vast and deadly Pomogo Forest, the King’s Breakfast is known for bringing on exquisite visions. After a taste of it, Sarah is as desperate to find it for herself and see the beautiful goddess it revealed to her as she is to sell it. But the depths of the forest hold more than she or her guide had prepared for. Something ancient stirs, and the forest twists to draw Sarah towards it.
Skillet and the Hell Slut make their home in the forest. Under the guidance of their Mother Moonflow, they and their sisters escape the patriarchal world outside and prepare for the rebirth of the Green Lady, an incarnation of female spiritual power. But not all is right as they prepare for the final ritual. Rejected by the Hell Slut in favor of a new sister, Skillet entreats the Lord of the Forest in a moment of jealous rage. A mission to the outside world goes off the rails for the Hell Slut and doubts begin to creep in.
As Sarah and the cult collide, the stirrings in the forest begin to reveal the true face of the inhuman powers within.
Reflections: While most of the horror is coming from the violence and the disturbing or disgusting imagery, what hooked me in was the unsettling moment after Sarah and Andy discovered they’d already used their insurance against the horrors of the forest, Leviathan’s Favored Son (a fungus that erases recent memories). There was that moment of slow, hair-raising realization that they’d already encountered something horrifying enough to risk leaving themselves lost and disoriented in the forest to escape the memory of it. And worse, they could only poke futilely at the blank spot in their memories and wonder what they’d gone through. It set up the desperation and paranoia of their situation perfectly.
Then, when they reach the cult, the threat of the eldritch horror of the forest lightens, but it keeps the tension on since we know more than Sarah does how willing the cult is to hurt and kill “phallic alecs” as they call anyone with a penis. Some of the cult’s behavior was truly bizarre and unsettling, while in other areas, they were playing on very familiar tropes. They’re TERF-y political lesbians whose spirituality is built upon ideas of the divine feminine and veneration of typical perisex AFAB bodies.
I appreciated how their transmisogynistic ideology was undermined not just through Sarah’s thoughts on it as a trans woman, but also subtly as more was revealed about the Green Lady and the Lord of the Forest. It became obvious how little sense it made to apply limited human-made gender essentialism to nature.
However, after Sarah reached the cult, I felt bogged down at times, stuck pushing through fetish content. Not to say something can’t be good horror and sexual or fetishistic, but I got a little tired of hearing the same descriptions about the same women’s bodies repeatedly, with Mother Moonflow particularly. There was shock value in that first meeting with Mother Moonflow where it’s revealed it’s a raccoon suckling at her (enormous, pendulous, fat) breasts (with wine cork nipples), that fit right in with this type of horror novel. But after multiple scenes focusing on her fat, her breasts, and her lactation with the similar language used each time or similar scenes taking place, it felt overplayed. I wasn’t getting the horror aspect anymore at that point, and without being into it personally, it was losing me.
Warnings: Depictions of transphobia, transmisogyny, misgendering, dysphoria.
Notes on Rep: Sarah identifies on-page as a trans woman.
