The Memory Hunters

Praise for The Memory Hunters

“The relationship between Vale and Key is beautifully vivid and takes a well-earned, startling turn toward the end. The Memory Hunters is a haunting story about how we preserve the past, and the cost of clinging too tight.” – The Washington Post

“A tense political thriller overlaid onto a vividly rendered dystopian landscape. . . . The result works both as postapocalyptic adventure and a meditation on the nature of history, told with remarkable richness and depth.” —Publishers Weekly

“A powerful meditation on the violence done through curation.” —Analog Magazine

“Fanaticism, ancestor worship, and archaeology combine with fascinating results… Tsai does an exemplary job of crafting a unique system of memory recall overlaid with the trappings of religious fervor, giving readers something new to mull over until book two releases.” – Booklist

“One of the stars of Mia Tsai’s The Memory Hunters is the setting itself; a future with discernable roots in our present, traceable through the threads of culture, geography, music and language that bind humanity as inextricably as the strands of mycelium make a forest into a family.” —Jacqueline Carey, New York Times bestselling author of Kushiel’s Dart

“The Memory Hunters is a gripping examination of who has the right to keep a culture’s history, set in an eerie dystopian future suffused with memories and fungal spores. The characters here jostle for power, for one another’s hearts, for control of key moments that will determine which direction the future takes. A lush and dynamic read!” —Andrea Stewart, bestselling author of The Drowning Empire series

“The Memory Hunters is a gorgeous, haunting dystopia that will infect your blood with its hyphae and fruit inside your heart. Tsai is a master at building romantic tension, even as revelations unfold in a cascade of “oh shit, OH SHIT, OH SHIT,” amidst a plot as complex as the story’s world. The story surfaces deep questions of culture and institutional preservation, and who has the right to remember things. The yearning of Tsai’s characters is exquisite, and the worldbuilding rich with detail and meaning. I’ll be thinking about this one for a long time.” —Yume Kitasei, author of The Stardust Grail

“As a reader, I loved Tsai’s rich character work, complicated relationships, and compelling exploration of a climate-haunted future — and as an archivist, I loved that The Memory Hunters grapples with the ethics of memory work and structural and institutional power imbalances, in the most interesting work of archival sff I’ve read this decade. I love to see lesbians pining, but I also love (and am much less likely!) to see a good in-universe literature review; I’ll be recommending this one with both my professional hats on.” —Rebecca Fraimow, author of Lady Eve’s Last Con

“The Memory Hunters is at once feral and tender, fierce and full of yearning. It’s a piercing examination of the ways museums uphold dominant narratives, of the violence of curation and the preciousness of land and lineage—all shot through with heart-pounding fight scenes and pure, undiluted sapphic angst. Absolutely devastating.” —P. H. Low, author of These Deathless Shores

“The Memory Hunters is an ambitious and thematically rich beginning to what is sure to be a brilliant duology. It has everything I love about fantasy—innovative worldbuilding, heartstopping action, and characters that I’d follow to the end of the world, even if it involves diving too deep into unsettling memories. Tsai weaves a unique dystopian narrative that examines the sociopolitics of climate devastation, the biases of historical narratives, and the perils that come with resisting cultural hegemony.” —S. Hati, author of And the Sky Bled

“A tale of fierce loyalty, delicious deception, and a yearning for what might have been—The Memory Hunters breathes life into a forgotten past. Tsai’s stunning storytelling will keep you feverishly turning pages. I loved every minute.” —Shay Kauwe, author of The Killing Spell