There is a sense of seemingly endless imagination running through Bitter Karella’s debut horror novel, Moonflow, an endlessness echoed by the psychedelic mushrooms its characters hunt and, sometimes ritualistically, consume. It’s a book that takes parallel stories of women in search of something and, organically and brutally, brings them to a startling collision without ever feeling predictable or overreliant on strenuous plot. Put another way: It’s a wild ride.
Moonflow begins with the story of Sarah, a trans woman with a knack for growing psychedelic mushrooms and selling them to the right people. But Sarah’s usual grows aren’t working out for her clients, and if she really wants to earn the cash she needs, she’ll need to venture out into California’s Pamogo forest in search of The King’s Breakfast, a powerful mushroom that will deliver cosmic enlightenment with just one bite.
So, with the help of an unlikely guide, Sarah ventures out into the dark, labyrinthine forest, unaware that other women have made their home out there. A sapphic commune that’s perfectly comfortable with violence and worships a figure known as the Green Lady has their own relationship with the King’s Breakfast, and when Sarah meets them, she’s in for the strangest trip of her life.
Karella’s prose, laced with wit and fury in equal measure, initially lays out these twin stories in parallel, slowly intersecting them without ever making the narratives feel like they’re only worth something once they’re intertwined. Sarah’s existence as a trans woman and the conditional and often skeptical way she’s treated because of it is a vital piece of this book’s puzzle, as is the radical assortment of minds that makes up the commune in the woods. This is a world of slowly emerging monsters, of forests that can swallow you whole, of pits of gory doom, but it’s also a world of startling empathy and deeply strange journeys into the unknown, filling the reader with both wonder and disgust on every page.
Moonflow emerges as one of the most exciting horror debuts of the year not simply for Karella’s commitment to being as strange and as ferocious as possible, but because of her portrayal of both the humanity of his characters and the inhumanity of the world that swallows them up, changes them and sends them on trips no mushroom could muster. Perfect for fans of Gretchen Felker-Martin’s Manhunt and Jenny Kiefer’s This Wretched Valley, Moonflow is a story you won’t soon forget.