The Memory Hunters

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. (July)