Overgrowth by Mira Grant
It’s been fifteen years since Mira Grant published Feed, the first of the Newsflesh novels. It’s been ten years since Chimera, the conclusion of the Parasitology trilogy, followed by the phenomenal Into the Drowning Deep in 2017. Since then Grant has published a kickass YA Alien novel and a handful of novellas, but even so, it’s been a while since we’ve had what feels like a “proper” Mira Grant novel, for whatever exactly that means.
Overgrowth asks what it would look like if a little girl told anyone who would listen that she was really an alien in the form of a human and the alien armada was coming… and that girl was telling the truth. As told by Mira Grant, the open pseudonym of Seanan McGuire, which is important because there is a sort of personal narrative style that Grant/McGuire works in, where most characters speak in a very specific explanatory descriptive way, and it’s something that I’ve appreciated reading a LOT of McGuire’s work over the last decade.
The Mira Grant name is where McGuire writes her more horror-themed science fiction novels and novellas (rather than as Seanan McGuire, which gets more urban fantasy/fantasy). Overgrowth is absolutely horrifying. That little girl at the heart of the novel’s premise—she walked into the woods one day and didn’t come back. Something else did, and that something else looked like the girl, moved like the girl, and sort of talked like the girl, but not exactly, and when she said that she was an alien, most people thought it was trauma, but the parents also knew that something was wrong.
I’m not going to say that this is a sort of horror that only parents can understand or relate to, because I don’t think that’s actually the case at all—but it is a horror that I feel more viscerally as a parent. It’s the combination fear of something happening to either of my children, but I know my kids. I know who they are as growing people, and I can scarcely imagine the raw horror of my son or daughter being there but being “not right”. It’s terrifying.
That’s also not truly what Overgrowth is about, because it’s about what happens when that kid (and others) are grown, still telling the same story, and the the aliens actually show up. What happens *then*? How does the world respond to those people who said they weren’t human in the face of evidence that something is coming? We can guess how governments would react based on years of evidence of how they treat actual humans they choose to deem a threat or a “security concern.” We can guess how other people will react to someone truly “other” because we’ve seen that in our lifetimes and our parents’ lifetimes. We know the stories.
All that is before the aliens actually show up, which isn’t really a spoiler. It’s kind of the premise behind the setup. If those kids weren’t lying, *something* has to arrive, and more than likely given that this is a Mira Grant novel, they’re not gong to be coming in peace.
If you’re down for this premise and for Mira Grant’s light touch with horror and characterization, Overgrowth is one of my favorite books of the year so far. There’s a lot to like here. Overgrowth is not going to open up your veins and make readers viscerally feel every bit of fear and terror and gore. It’s not that sort of book, and Grant (so far) has not quite been that sort of writer (though it’s been a very long time since I’ve read Newsflesh or Parasitology), but that’s also not what you go to Mira Grant for. You read Mira Grant for one hell of a premise, fast-paced storytelling, and a very specific characterization. Overgrowth hits the mark.
Aunt Tigress by Emily Yu-Xuan Qin
I often think of urban fantasy debuts the way I remember Seanan McGuire’s Rosemary and Rue or Jim Butcher’s Storm Front: there’s enough to interest me, but not quite to hook me into the series, but I absolutely need to read one to two more books because the hook is almost certainly coming, and once it sets, I’ll be fully invested for another twenty books.
Aunt Tigress is an exciting debut urban fantasy from Emily Yu-Xuan Qin set in Calgary and wrapped in Chinese and First Nations mythology. I’m… interested. Tam Lin is part magical tiger, with a human mother and a tiger on her father’s side. Everything starts with the death of Tam’s titular Aunt Tigress, who appears to have been a truly awful person, and it turns out that perhaps Aunt Tigress was murdered, and Tam wants to find out what happened despite her withdrawing from her magical heritage. A university classmate, Janet, latches on to Tam and helps her on her quest. Misadventures ensue.
I bounced off this idea during the novel, but I wonder if there will be more Tam Lin novels, and if so, in what way the mythology of Tam Lin and Janet and faerie might play into that. Having a character named Tam Lin is one thing. Tam having a love interest named Janet is something else. That’s not really germane to Aunt Tigress, but given some distance, it’s something I’m thinking about.
Aunt Tigress is a wild adventure that starts relatively grounded and ends up on a truly magical mystery tour (™) through a mystical cosmos of sorts. I didn’t love this, but I’ll read another from Qin to see how she develops as a storyteller.
PUBLISHED BY: Joe Sherry - Senior Editor of Nerds of a Feather. Hugo and Ignyte Winner. Minnesotan.
