My debut novel Mushroom Blues arrives in just a few weeks! Last month, the fine folks at Before We Go Blog revealed the first chapter (read it here), and now I’m very excited to show off chapter two. Scroll down to get another taste of Henrietta, Koji and Neo Kinoko before the book launches on March 19th!
This exclusive excerpt is part of the Mushroom Blues virtual book tour. Check out the full tour here.
🍄 BOOK INFORMATION 🍄
Book/Author: Mushroom Blues (The Hofmann Report #1) by Adrian M. Gibson
Cover Artist: Felix Ortiz | Instagram | Artstation
Typography/Cover Design: Adrian M. Gibson
Genre: Science Fiction / Mystery / Police Procedural / Dystopia / Fungalpunk
Release Date: March 19th, 2024
Available formats: Paperback, eBook, hardcover (April 2), audiobook (April 16)
Soundtrack composed/mastered by: Sporer
Available formats: Digital, limited edition cassette
🍄 BOOK BLURB 🍄
BLADE RUNNER, TRUE DETECTIVE and DISTRICT 9 meld with the weird worlds of JEFF VANDERMEER, PHILIP K. DICK and CHINA MIÉVILLE in Adrian M. Gibson’s fungalpunk noir debut.
TWO YEARS AFTER a devastating defeat in the decade-long Spore War, the island nation of Hōppon and its capital city of Neo Kinoko are occupied by invading Coprinian forces. Its Fungal citizens are in dire straits, wracked by food shortages, poverty and an influx of war refugees. Even worse, the corrupt occupiers exploit their power, hounding the native population.
As a winter storm looms over the metropolis, NKPD Detective Henrietta Hofmann begrudgingly partners up with mushroom-headed patrol officer Koji Nameko to investigate the mysterious murders of Fungal and half-breed children. Their investigation drags them deep into the seedy underbelly of a war-torn city, one brimming with colonizers, criminal gangs, racial division and moral decay.
In order to solve the case and unravel the truth, Hofmann must challenge her past and embrace Fungal ways. What she and Nameko uncover in the midst of this frigid wasteland will chill them to the core, but will they make it through the storm alive?
🍄 CHAPTER TWO 🍄
RUBBLE & RUIN
[2] Case File #42-56
Spirit Island | 5:56 a.m.
– – – – – – – – –
I PATROLLED THE beach, clearing my head of irrational fears of fungi and spores. Pulling out my voice recorder, I noted the clues I’d picked up on: “Dismembered limbs and head. Cap cut off, bruising around edges. Heavy duty bag, black. Rope, blue and red, logograms in Hōpponese. Mycopaper lantern, rotten.”
But questions tugged at me. “Who would chop up a fungal child? Where did this body come from?”
My mind raced with possibilities as I paced. The rope, the decay, and the location made me think of boats …
“Fishermen? Could they have dumped the body overboard?” I twisted my boots in the dark sand, tap-tapping my pen on my chin. Then again, the tides and waves in Kinoko Bay could’ve brought it in from any number of places.
Boat horns blared out on the bay. The black beach was riddled with kelp, mushroom colonies growing on their slimy surfaces.
Not far off, I heard shouts and chants—the kind of reverberation that accumulated in a crowd. I could make out the high and low pitches of Hōpponese, but at this distance it was too muffled for me to pinpoint what was being said.
I paused and followed the curve of urban sprawl as it hugged the vast bay, west of Spirit Island and northward toward Central and The Docks. There, the Neo Kinoko skyline was cut through by the mouth of the Kinoko River.
I’d thought Morellum was huge—especially as Coprinia’s capital city—but Neo Kinoko was monstrous. How did this backwards species manage such a feat of engineering?
Spirit Island was a rare case in that no one lived here. Who would? It was just rocks, sand, and trees. This place was a reminder of what Neo Kinoko must’ve been like before modernization.
Still, modernity made for a striking silhouette of rubble and ruin against the glow of the rising sun. A sprawl of fungi-speckled towers thrust into the sky. Some had been turned to dilapidated stumps by the war, untouched, even two years on. But nothing made an impression like that of the Mother Mushroom. The mile-high fungus was the tallest in the entire Hōpponese archipelago, overshadowing and dominating the metropolis—it loomed like a watchful matriarch.
I wondered how old that bloody thing must be.
I’d seen it from the NKPD central precinct, but not up close—I never wanted to. Maybe it was the warts peppering its bright red cap, or the ridges of gills. Could have been the way its veil billowed on a windy day, enveloping the gargantuan stem like an undulating dress. It prickled my skin to see any kind of fungi up close, let alone one large enough to block out the sky.
I still couldn’t wrap my head around them, these fungals and their city. Spores erupting in my face wouldn’t help me develop a feeling of comfort in their presence, either.
My train of thought was cut off by choked cries. Nearby, a slim fungal patrol cop interviewed an elderly fungal—the one who’d found the bag. The old gillie sat on the sand, rocking and sobbing with his hands covering his face. The cop was crouched beside him. He had a shaggy, gray-and-black mushroom cap atop a short frame, with scruff on his face and teeth slightly yellowed from cigarettes. The bold yellow letters of the NKPD practically jumped off the blue police-issue jacket he wore.
“I was patrolling nearby in Hedoro Industrial City, and sensed something wrong,” the patrol cop had told me when I’d arrived.
Sensed? I had no idea what he’d meant by that. What was he sensing? How had that led him here?
I hadn’t even given him the chance to introduce himself—it would’ve meant me being close to him and his horrible mushroom cap head for far longer than I was okay with. He seemed diligent and attentive, sure, but also naïve. The type that was young enough to try and prove himself before the system broke him.
I’d decided to let him handle the interview: They were the same species, spoke the same language. Given how eager he was, he’d likely be able to get more out of the witness than I could. I wasn’t exactly in the mood to talk to a blubbering old sporesack, either.
As I approached them, I still felt the spores from earlier scratching at my corneas. I slowed, taking a second to rub my eyes.
“Haowa,” I said—good morning. I motioned for the cop to continue as I observed, trying to hide my discomfort.
“I am sorry that your prayers were disturbed in such a terrible manner,” he said, consoling the old fungal in soft tones and massaging his hunched back. The hophead cop’s unsettling mushroom head bobbed, gills flaring as if breathing. “Take your time and answer when you are ready.”
Even after four months in Hōppon, I found their language tricky and their mushroom heads … off-putting.
“I-I am … I …” the elder trailed off.
“Please relax, shushu-shen,” the cop urged him, using the word for uncle and the honorific for senior.
Now that I was close, I studied the old fungal. His wispy mycelial beard bent to gravity as much as the wrinkled, pale blue cap atop his head. Like every fungal, he had creepy colonies of mushrooms growing from each of his shoulders. The little fruiting bodies poked through the mycofabric of his plain, white Eien robes—the clothing of a religious fanatic and devout Hōpponese. Dressed like that, it seemed obvious why he’d be shivering from his brittle legs up to his puckered cap. But his eyes darted back and forth and he had a spooked expression on his furrowed face.
What was he afraid of?
Grayish spores flowed from his gills as he burst into tears again. I had to restrain myself from leaping backward in disgust at his spores. Instead, I put my mask back on.
“The … the t-temple,” the old fungal stammered. His withered finger pointed away from the beach, toward a tall wall of evergreen trees. The forest dominated the middle of Spirit Island.
“… festival … in two days,” he muttered. “This island … this city … zunoro! Our people will know … they will come!”
My ears were still adapting to the peculiarities of Hōpponese speech. Zunoro … I struggled to remember the words. I clicked my voice recorder and repeated the word a few times. It was the only way I’d remember to ask for a translation later.
I looked at the tree line, dense with foliage, the rocky ground sprinkled with snow. Was there a temple up there in the forest? Who will come? And which festival was he talking about?
Then it clicked. Captain Ridgeway had told the Homicide department that the winter solstice was in couple of days. The locals would be celebrating a lantern festival, praying to one of their pagan gods.
Something I’d learned from human history was that if you took away a people’s religion—their faith and foundations—you’d take away their hope.
That was the mistake we humans made when Coprinia invaded Hōppon: The government and military left the fungals’ religion intact. With Eienism still present and practiced, hope persisted.
All of a sudden, the old sporesack screamed, his voice cracking and gills spasming: “They are here!”
“Who here?” I demanded in sloppy Hōpponese.
The cop’s gills twitched and his attention was torn away. He ran down the beach, waving his arms. I squinted in his direction and saw nothing of note. Then, from the far edges of the shore, I heard shouts growing louder. A rhythmic chant underscored it, adding an eerie atmosphere to the unfolding scene.
“They have come for the child,” the witness murmured.
The skin beneath my jacket pricked with goosebumps. The dead body?
That’s when I saw them over the low dunes: Hundreds of feet away, the tops of dozens of fungals’ mushroom caps, swaying as they crossed a wooden bridge onto Spirit Island. The flaring red and blue of police sirens strobed on the far side, where the densely packed houses and shrines of Torotown began.
Shit … This couldn’t be good.
I radioed dispatch: “Send backup. Now!”
🍄 ABOUT THE AUTHOR 🍄
ADRIAN M. GIBSON is a Canadian author, podcaster and illustrator (as well as occasional tattoo artist). He was born in Ontario, Canada, but grew up in British Columbia. He studied English Literature and has worked in music journalism, restaurants, tattoo studios, clothing stores and a bevy of odd jobs. In 2021, he created the SFF Addicts podcast, which he co-hosts with fellow author M. J. Kuhn. The two host in-depth interviews with an array of science fiction and fantasy authors, as well as writing masterclasses.
Adrian has a not-so-casual obsession with mushrooms, relishes in the vastness of nature and is a self-proclaimed “child of the mountains.” He enjoys cooking, music, video games, politics and science, as well as reading fiction and comic books. He lives in Quito, Ecuador with his wife and sons.
Mushroom Blues is his debut novel.
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