Mushroom Blues

A Book Review

“…only once you lingered in a thing’s shadow could you comprehend its size.”

Here we find Detective Hoffman, standing in the shadow of a giant mushroom, starting to understand the even larger shadow that colonialism and racism have cast across Neo Kinoko, and the vestiges of it that she wears. It’s a confrontation with the other, a mushroom shaped specter that’s challenged Hoffman across the skyline of her city of exile, and a reflective turning point for her. There’s so much of the story, message, and character packed into that one line, that I wondered how much secret delight Gibson took in writing it.

Mushroom Blues by Adrian Gibson is a delightful read full of scenes like this. It packages a police procedural / detective noir story into a very strange environment, and uses it as a vehicle to talk about colonialism, racism, and the other. It’s a fast-paced, gritty thing with a fantastically unique setting — a city made of mushrooms.

And I think that’s what I loved most about this book. The “fungalverse” is both referential to, and a critique of, cyberpunk. Instead of imagining a dystopic society ravaged by rampant technology, and losing connection to their humanity and each other while being simultaneously hyper-connected through the internet, it inverts this trope with a more utopic vision of a pseudo-mystical fungalnet that connects the Hōpponese society and amplifies their humanity, connection to each other, and connection to their environment. Where the plot deals with the heavy topics of colonialism, the setting creates a criticism of modernity.

The print book is an absolute treat, too, and pushes the boundary of what I’ve seen any book achieve with additional content. It’s packed full of artistic photographs, impeccable formatting, a map, a glossary of fungal terms, an invented language and religion, and even an album with song recommendations for each chapter. I can’t even imagine how much work that took. Adrian went above and beyond here, and I loved it!

I’ll definitely be reading the series from here on, and I can’t wait to see where it heads! Kudos to Adrian Gibson on an awesome book.

Mushroom Blues is part of the Self-Published Science Fiction Competition alongside my book, Transference, and so many others. Adrian runs an awesome podcast (details here), and I was super excited to check his book out! If you’re interested in more reviews, short stories, or general ramblings from me, you can subscribe to my substack below.