The Memory Hunters

by Mia Tsai

Overview

Inception meets Indiana Jones in this cinematic, slow burn, romantic fantasy following a headstrong academic and her equally stubborn bodyguard as they unearth an ancient secret that rocks the foundations of their society…and challenges their unspoken love for one another. A sapphic, dark academia-adjacent, climate dystopia — with mushrooms — for readers of Blood Over Bright Haven, A Memory Called Empire, and Ink Blood Sister Scribe.

Kiana Strade can dive deeper into blood memories than anyone alive. But instead of devoting her talents to the temple she’s meant to lead, Key wants to do research for the Museum of Human Memory. . . and to avoid the public eye.

Valerian IV's twin swords protect Key from murderous rivals and her own enthusiasm alike. Vale cares about Key as a friend—and maybe more—but most of all, she needs to keep her job so she can support her parents and siblings in the storm-torn south.

But when Key collects a memory that diverges from official history, only Vale sees the fallout. Key’s mentor suspiciously dismisses the finding; her powerful mother demands she stop research altogether. And Key, unusually affected by the memory, begins to lose moments, then minutes, then days.

As Vale becomes increasingly entangled in Key’s obsessive drive for answers, the women uncover a shattering discovery—and a devastating betrayal. Key and Vale can remain complicit, or they can jeopardize everything for the truth.

Either way, Key is becoming consumed by the past in more ways than one, and time is running out.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781645662082
Publisher:	Kensington
Publication date:	07/29/2025
Series:	The Consecrated
Pages:	464
Product dimensions:	5.60(w) x 8.30(h) x 1.60(d)

About the Author

Mia Tsai is a Taiwanese American author of speculative fiction, including Bitter Medicine and The Memory Hunters. An editor at GigaNotoSaurus, a 2024 Hugo Finalist for Best Semi-pro Zine, she is also a musician, teacher, and erstwhile photographer who earned her bachelors of humanities and arts in music and psychology at Carnegie Mellon University and her masters of music in piano pedagogy at Georgia State University. She lives in the Atlanta area with her family, and, when not writing, is a hype woman for her orchids and devoted cat gopher. She can be found online at MiaTsai.com and @mia.tsai.books on Instagram and Tiktok.

Editorial Reviews

Praise for The Memory Hunters

“A tense political thriller overlaid onto a vividly rendered dystopian landscape. . . . The result works both as postapocalyptic adventure and a meditation on the nature of history, told with remarkable richness and depth.” —Publishers Weekly

“A powerful meditation on the violence done through curation.” —Analog Magazine

“One of the stars of Mia Tsai’s The Memory Hunters is the setting itself; a future with discernable roots in our present, traceable through the threads of culture, geography, music and language that bind humanity as inextricably as the strands of mycelium make a forest into a family.” —Jacqueline Carey, New York Times bestselling author of Kushiel’s Dart

“The Memory Hunters is a gripping examination of who has the right to keep a culture’s history, set in an eerie dystopian future suffused with memories and fungal spores. The characters here jostle for power, for one another’s hearts, for control of key moments that will determine which direction the future takes. A lush and dynamic read!” —Andrea Stewart, bestselling author of The Drowning Empire series

"The Memory Hunters is a gorgeous, haunting dystopia that will infect your blood with its hyphae and fruit inside your heart. Tsai is a master at building romantic tension, even as revelations unfold in a cascade of "oh shit, OH SHIT, OH SHIT," amidst a plot as complex as the story's world. The story surfaces deep questions of culture and institutional preservation, and who has the right to remember things. The yearning of Tsai's characters is exquisite, and the worldbuilding rich with detail and meaning. I'll be thinking about this one for a long time." —Yume Kitasei, author of The Stardust Grail

“As a reader, I loved Tsai's rich character work, complicated relationships, and compelling exploration of a climate-haunted future — and as an archivist, I loved that The Memory Hunters grapples with the ethics of memory work and structural and institutional power imbalances, in the most interesting work of archival sff I've read this decade. I love to see lesbians pining, but I also love (and am much less likely!) to see a good in-universe literature review; I'll be recommending this one with both my professional hats on.” —Rebecca Fraimow, author of Lady Eve's Last Con

“The Memory Hunters is at once feral and tender, fierce and full of yearning. It’s a piercing examination of the ways museums uphold dominant narratives, of the violence of curation and the preciousness of land and lineage—all shot through with heart-pounding fight scenes and pure, undiluted sapphic angst. Absolutely devastating.” —P. H. Low, author of These Deathless Shores

“The Memory Hunters is an ambitious and thematically rich beginning to what is sure to be a brilliant duology. It has everything I love about fantasy—innovative worldbuilding, heartstopping action, and characters that I’d follow to the end of the world, even if it involves diving too deep into unsettling memories. Tsai weaves a unique dystopian narrative that examines the sociopolitics of climate devastation, the biases of historical narratives, and the perils that come with resisting cultural hegemony.” —S. Hati, author of And the Sky Bled

“A tale of fierce loyalty, delicious deception, and a yearning for what might have been—The Memory Hunters breathes life into a forgotten past. Tsai’s stunning storytelling will keep you feverishly turning pages. I loved every minute.” —Shay Kauwe, author of The Killing Spell

From the Publisher