The Irresponsible Reader

I keep getting distracted from working on this post, but when I saw this on the schedule for BBNYA Spotlight posts, I figured it was about to time to force myself to write something. If I’m doing one post about this novel today, I might as well do two, right?

Mushroom Blues

by Adrian M. Gibson

DETAILS:
Series: The Hofmann Report, Book One
Publisher: Kinoko Book Co.
Publication Date: April 2, 2024
Format: Paperback
Length: 371 pg.
Read Date: August 20-26, 2025

What’s on the back cover of Mushroom Blues?

In addition to glowing blurbs from people who know what they’re talking about, we get this description:

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 award-winning 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 homicide 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?

The Worldbuilding

My biggest—probably only (or only worth writing down)—complaint about this book is that we just don’t get told enough about the Hōpponese/Human relations before the war. I’m having a hard time understanding what things were like, what kind of cultural/technological/commercial relationships/understandings existed. I also have a hard time believing that there wasn’t anything worth talking about before the war started.

Now, let’s set that all aside for a moment—I don’t want to spend more time on it, it’s not worth it, and if the novel itself can, I can. The rest of the worldbuilding, the Hōpponese culture, the despicable way that the humans are treating them, the way the Human-Occupier mini-culture is operating, the Hōpponese resistance (s), the Hōpponese themselves, the way that humans risk some kind of infection every time they breathe the air, the…yeah, the list is getting out of hand. So let’s just sum it up with “everything I didn’t mention in the above paragraph” are close enough to perfect that you can’t tell me not to consider it.

As you read this book, you can see the city, you can smell the environs, taste some of the food described, feel the atmosphere, you can hear the language, and you can viscerally sense the non-humanness of the Hōpponese and just how off-putting it is. Gibson utterly nailed this.

I’ve Just Gotta Say This…

I know I haven’t read everything out there about this book—even if I ignore Goodreads, online retailers, The Story Graph, etc.—so maybe I missed this. If I did—I’ll happily eat my hat and credit others. But I haven’t seen anyone talk about Alien Nation in relation to this book—the movie, the TV series, the tie-in novels (and, yes, I watched and read them all). I don’t get it—other than age (we’re talking late 80s/early 90s), these are the perfect comparisons to this work.

Sure, Gibson’s book is so much better—if only because the Fungal people don’t get drunk off of something as silly as spoiled milk. But the prejudice, the cultural mixes, the attitudes (both within the police and both races) toward the non-human partner, and the attitude of the human detective about the whole partnership…these works are of a piece.

Anyway, I just had to say something about it because I couldn’t stop thinking about it for a moment.

So, what did I think about Mushroom Blues?

Just by talking about it as little as I have already, I want to set everything (book, employment, family obligation, writing project—including this post) aside for the next few days and re-read the book; it’s got its hooks in me that deeply. Something I didn’t realize until now.

Most of the time, I don’t really think about how unnerving it has to be for a human to walk around in a fictional world and encounter an elf, a Vulcan, an orc, or a…whatever it was that Rocky from Project: Hail Mary was. At least after the first encounter. But there’s something about a mushroom-person that gives me the willies—Gibson has filled this species with a lot of facts and theories about how mushrooms on our planet live and communicate, just put them in humanoid bodies capable of speaking English (or Common).

The other-ness, or non-humanness, of the Hōppon is as much part of the atmosphere of the book as is the tobacco smoke that Hofmann fills the air around her with. And I do feel a little speciesist just saying that. And then once you learn what it is—beyond bringing some diversity to the force—that Koji does for the police? It’s worse. But I don’t for a second lose any affection for or curiosity about Koji. It’s just one more reason that I feel unnerved by the Hōppon.

I had guessed the who—but not most of the why—behind these crimes pretty early on—and I’m not sure that Gibson’s herrings were of a red-enough color to capture my attention. But the way that Koji and Hofmann go about their investigation and slowly reveal the truth—and what that truth means? Gibson was near-perfect again on that front.

I really just want to keep going on about all the things about this book that I loved—note how I haven’t talked about the characters, because that’d be another few hundred pages just to start.

The mystery/police procedural part of this was great. The alternate world was outstanding. The worldbuilding is top-notch. The primary and secondary characters were drawn so wonderfully. The motives for the crimes (and the crime fighting) were complex and messy—and almost entirely understandable. The genre-hybrid of this feels entirely natural to an extent that you can almost wonder why anyone hasn’t been approaching these genres in a similar fashion for decades.

I’m just babbling now—I don’t have anything coherent to say anymore (assuming I started that way). If you haven’t taken the plunge with this book, you really should. That’s all I’ve got to say.

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