I am so glad the shockingly bright, fuzzy-blacklight-poster-style cover of this book grabbed my attention while I was doing work at a local cafe/bookstore the other day, because I otherwise might not have heard about Moonflow, and what a trip it turned out to be. Easily one of my favorite reads this year.
Moonflow is, as author Bitter Karella described it in a recent interview, “Psychedelic trans cosmic fungal splatterpunk.” It follows Sarah, a trans woman who grows and sells trippy mushrooms, on a desperate search for a mushroom known as the King’s Breakfast. It’s the type of excursion that seems doomed from the start, as the King’s Breakfast is only found in a forest best known for being a place people do not return from, and predictably, things start going off the rails almost immediately. The forest is haunted and seemingly in a constant state of change, there’s a TERFy lesbian off-grid cult that’s engaged in some deeply bizarre activities and poor Sarah is… just doing her best (she is painfully relatable).
This book horrified me, made me laugh and made me gag, often all at once. It’s queer as hell, impressively creepy, packed with extremely on-the-nose satire and an absolutely wild ride all around.