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#Sorrowland
nellasbookplanet · 2 months
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Book recs: the evil fungi did it
We all know of The Last of Us, but that franchise isn't the only example of fungal invasions. We've got zombies and apocalypses, we've got gothic horror, we've got fantasy, we've got romance, we've got space - no genre is safe from having their characters become the home of fungal organisms.
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For more details on the books, continue under the readmore. Titles marked with * are my personal favorites. And as always, feel free to share your own recs in the notes!
If you want more book recs, check out my masterpost of rec lists!
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The Girl with all the Gifts (The Girl with All the Gifts series) by M.R. Carey
Want another fungal zombie apocalypse? Then I come bearing great news! The Girl with All the Gifts is a post apocalyptic novel following a group of characters fleeing across an infested wasteland, trying to stay alive and hoping to find a cure. One of the characters is Melanie, a young girl who carries the contagion inside of her and hungers for flesh, but like many children of the apocalypse has kept her humanity. Is she and children like her the answer to the cure we are looking for? Or are they the start of something entirely new? This book has also been adapted as a movie!
Cold Storage by David Koepp*
Years ago, a quickly growing fungal organism capable of wiping out humanity came dangerously close to spreading. It was contained and kept in cold storage underneath a military repository. Since then, a larger storage facility has been built on top, the dangers on the lower floor being largely forgotten. That is, until it makes a new attempt at escape. Now, two unsuspecting security guards might be all that stands in the way of complete extermination. This book is both funny and genuine in its characters, and genuinely creepy in its portrayal of body horror.
Salvaged by Madeline Roux
Rosalyn Devar is on the run from her famous family, and has run so far she ended up in space. Now she works as a "space janitor", being sent off to clean up the remains of failed research expeditions. But in trying to cope with her problems, she has fucked up on her job multiple times, and is now close to losing her position. Her last chance is the Brigantine: a research vessel gone silent, all crew presumed dead. But when she arrives to salvage it, Rosalyn discovers the crew isn't as dead as presumed. But are they still human - and will Rosalyn be able to keep her own humanity?
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The Annual Migration of Clouds by Premee Mohamed
Novella. Reid is a young woman living in a small community after a climate collapse. Resources are scarce, but Reid's biggest problem is Cad, a mind-altering fungal parasite that lives inside her body. When she is offered a rare chance at attending a far-away university in a secluded dome community, Reid must decide whether to leave or stay to help support her community.
Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia*
Noemí Taboada is a glamorous and well-off young woman, but when she receives a frantic letter from her newly-wed cousin, Noemí must leave her glamorous life and travel to find out what is wrong. As she arrives at High Place, a mansion on the Mexican countryside, Noemí is met with mysteries and her cousin's new English family. As she tries to find out the truth behind High Place and its inhabitants, Noemí's only ally is the youngest son of the family. But will she be able to find out what so scared her cousin before it's too late for all of them?
Sorrowland by Rivers Solomon
A young pregnant woman flees a cult that left her body strange and changing in terrifying ways. Hiding from both a world wanting to oppress her and the cult seeking to force her back, she does her best to raise her children while trying to find out the truth of the cult and being pursued by a hunter in a dangerous game of cat and mouse. Bleak and scary, Sorrowland is a book that will creep under your skin with horrors both fantastical and very, very real.
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What Moves the Dead (Sworn Soldier duology) by T. Kingfisher
Novella. Alex Easton, retired soldier, travels to visit their childhood friends, siblings Madeline and Roderick Usher, after finding out that Madeline is dying. In the siblings' rural, ancestral home, Madeline walks in her sleep and looks to be fading away, while around it wildlife seems to be possessed by a strange force. With the help of a mycologist and an American doctor, Alex attempts to save Madeline and reveal the truth of her illness.
Wanderers (Wanderers duology) by Chuck Wendig
A strange illness has struck the United States: with no warning, random people with seemingly no connection simply get up and start walking. They do not eat, do not sleep, do not communicate, and they do not stop - and if you try to force them, they literally explode from the inside. Teenaged Shana isn't one of these sleepwalkers, but her little sister is. Unwilling to leave her sister on her own, Shana accompanies the growing flock of walkers, protecting them as one of many "shepherds". And this protection proves necessary, as the sleepwalkers is only the first step toward what might very well be the extinction of the human race. An 800 page epic, Wanderers is a slowburn apocalypse story with a multitude pov characters and plot threads, from fungal pandemics and all-knowing AI to the all too real portrayal of radicalization and bigotry.
The Dawnhounds (The Endsong series) by Sascha Stronach
The Dawnhounds is a book where you just kind of have to let the story and the world wash over you. It skirts the line of scifi and fantasy, with a futuristic world of environmentally friendly mushroom houses and deadly fungi bio weapons next to literally god-given superpowers and near-immortality. It’s really cool and unlike anything else I’ve ever read, but also a bit confusing. Bonus: it’s also sapphic!
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Agents of Dreamland (Tinfoil Dossier trilogy) by Caitlín R. Kiernan
Novella. A government agent known only as the Signalman; a cult preying on the young and vulnerable, promising to usher in a new age; a woman who exists outside of time, searching for a way to save humanity. Agents of Dreamland is short, but includes many spooky elements, among them an alien and possibly world-ending fungi. The narrative is non-linear and a bit strange, but also fascinating.
The Genius Plague by David Walton
Soon after landing his dream job at the NSA, things get weird for Neil Johns. His brother Paul, a mycologist, returns from a trip to the Amazon, carrying a nearly lethal fungal infection and a strangely sharpened mind. At work, Neil starts picking up mysterious messages originating out of South America, where cases similar to that of Paul starts occurring. And strangest of all: all the infected seem to be working towards the same goal. Recommended with the caveat that, while the fungal stuff is really cool, The Genius Plague is also happy to idolize American intelligent agencies and demonize environmentalism and anti-imperialism.
Little Mushroom: Judgement Day (Little Mushroom duology) by Shisi
An Zhe isn’t human. He’s a mushroom who absorbed the DNA of a dying man, allowing him to take on human guise and leave the wilderness. Entering one of the last human bases, a place struggling to keep out the mutated and dangerous creatures of the wilds, An Zhe must keep his identity secret as he searches for something which was taken from him. While not my cup of tea (frankly, I need more female characters), Little Mushroom is an undeniably unique m/m romance novel.
Bonus AKA these don't technically involve any fungi but have similar vibes of parasites and nature corrupting the human
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Parasite (Parasitology trilogy) by Mira Grant*
In the near future, a great leap in medical science has improved human health by leaps and bounds: a genetically engineered tape worm. Within a few years, almost every human has their own personal parasite implanted. But now, something is happening to the parasites - they want more, whether their hosts want to share or not.
Annihilation (Southern Reach trilogy) by Jeff Vandermeer
For decades, Area X has been completely cut off from humanity. The only ones to enter are small organized expeditions, many of which never return, or return... wrong. We follow the latest expedition, its participants known only as the anthropologist, the psychologist, the surveyor, and our narrator, the biologist. As they enter into Area X to try to find out its secrets, only one thing is for sure: they will never be the same again.
Wilder Girls by Rory Power
Young adult. Over a year ago, the Raxter School for Girls was hit by the Tox, a strange disease that killed off many and left the survivors' bodies slowly changing in terrifying ways. The island the school is on has been in quarantine since then, and the girls dare not leave the school grounds lest they become victims of wild animals changed by the Tox. But as they wait for the promised cure, one of the girls goes missing, and her friends are willing to do anything to find her. Unsettling, spooky, and sapphic, this is a unique read featuring body horror and messy, dangerous girls.
(Second) Bonus AKA I haven't read these yet but they seem really cool
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City of Saints and Madmen (Ambergris trilogy) by Jeff Vandermeer
Ambergris, a city created by a mushroom-like people, is now the home of humans, but the original inhabitants are still there, residing beneath the city.
Creatures of Want and Ruin (Diabolist's Library series) by Molly Tanzer
It’s the prohibition era, and while Ellie does fishing during the day, at night she bootlegs moonshine in Long Island. But unbeknownst to Ellie, some of the booze she smuggles has a strange source: distilled from mushrooms by a cult, it causes those who drink it to see terrible things, such as the the destruction of Long Island.
Bloom by Wil McCarthy
The inner solar system has been overtaken by fast-reproducing, fast-mutating technogenic life. Humanity has fled to the outer solar system, hiding beneath the ice of Jupiter's moon, but even here they aren't safe from possible incursion of mycospores, which lead to deadly blooms. Now a group of astronauts venture back to an infected Earth.
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papenathys · 10 months
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I hate conflict free books I hate "good" pure queer rep I hate oppression-free fantasy universes I hate cozy feel good fluffy stories I hate "pure" desexualised sapphic yearning,, I love violence and revolution and sex and angst and murder <3
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charliejaneanders · 8 months
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Trans people used to look for reflections of ourselves in metaphors and subtexts — but now, a lot of us are realizing that it's way better when stories feature actual trans characters who get to live complicated lives. And you can even feature living, breathing trans characters alongside metaphors for transness. My latest, over in @them.
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jojotier · 6 months
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Question: what is it about fungus that makes it such an apt metaphor for the rot and legacy of colonialism but also, simultaneously, the ability to grow into something new and not quite animal to still yet perservere
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ursulaklegay · 11 months
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ULTIMATE (queer) SFF LIST (in progress)
Rivers Solomon - An unkindness of ghosts, The Deep, Sorrowland 
Akwaeke Emezi - PET, BITTER
Jaqueline Koayanagi - Ascension
Otter Lieffe - Margins and murmurations trilogy
Ursula K. Le Guin - The left hand of darkness
Becky Chambers - To be taught, if fortunate
Octavia Butler - The Xenogenesis series
Chana Porter - The seep
Tamsyn Muir - The locked tomb series
Ray Nyler - The mountain in the sea
Starhawk - The Fifth Sacred Thing
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layaart · 1 year
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a little sketch of vern, feral, and howling from Sorrowland by Rivers Solomon!
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romantic-musings · 1 year
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Sorrowland by Rivers Solomon
southern gothic | horror | LGBT
Vern - seven months pregnant and desperate to escape the strict religious compound where she was raised - flees for the shelter of the woods. There, she gives birth to twins, and plans to raise them far from the influence of the outside world. But even in the forest, Vern is a hunted woman. Forced to fight back against the community that refuses to let her go, she unleashes incredible brutality far beyond what a person should be capable of, her body wracked by inexplicable and uncanny changes. To understand her metamorphosis and to protect her small family, Vern has to face the past, and more troubling, the future - outside the woods. Finding the truth will mean uncovering the secrets of the compound she fled but also the violent history in America that produced it.
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readsofawe · 6 months
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#readsofawe photo challenge: blue and gold!
I read Sorrowland by Rivers Solomon earlier in the week and it absolutely kicked my ass! What an incredible book.
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wild-words-and-wounds · 7 months
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abbeyx · 2 years
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happy june!! here are the books I read this month—my favorite was My Year of Meats by Ruth Ozeki 🐄
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vote yes if you have finished the entire book.
vote no if you have not finished the entire book.
(faq · submit a book)
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papenathys · 2 months
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Forgot to mention Rivers Solomon among good political sff writers..... Some of you "Babel is the most heartwrenching revolutionary educational political fantasy ever" girls would shit your pants and cry if you read Sorrowland, An Unkindness of Ghosts or The Deep. All of them are trans and sapphic btw.
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qbdatabase · 1 month
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Sorrowland by Rivers Solomon Vern - seven months pregnant and desperate to escape the strict religious compound where she was raised - flees for the shelter of the woods. There, she gives birth to twins, and plans to raise them far from the influence of the outside world. But even in the forest, Vern is a hunted woman ... View the full summary and rep info on wordpress!
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jojotier · 6 months
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obsessed with Rivers Solomon's writing. the past is a haunting and it lives inside of you regardless so let it in. good or bad let it in.
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journalparadoxal · 1 year
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What a strange sadness, to be done with the woman who'd made you
Rivers Solomon, Sorrowland
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aroaessidhe · 2 years
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matching books to my bookmarks, mushroom edition
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