The Memory Hunters fulfills the “red” square for CBR17 Bingo.
I really enjoyed Mia Tsai’s Bitter Medicine, and was very excited to try The Memory Hunters, which is a completely new world and setting. It is set in a type of near future where climate change has resulted in much of the coast as we know it being devastated and swallowed by the ocean and storms, and fungi being used as a way to collect and remember history. It opens when Kiana Strade, a memory hunter who works for the museum, convinces her guardian, Valerian IV who is an immigrant and treated as an outcast by much of society, that the spirits of the ancestors are guiding her to a specific site, despite the fact they’re already late returning to the museum. When Key does her dive through history, the memory she sees reminds her of the rituals of the Temple, of which her mother is a leader, and she is absolutely confident she’s found something that’s going to change everything. But when she returns, her boss, Genevieve, tells her the finding is insignificant, and Key is forced to reintegrate, a process by which memories of a dive that are overtaking her own personality and history are overwritten, so she’ll forget what she saw.
My favorite part of The Memory Hunters was the way it talks about who has a right to history. Museums often act like they’re doing a good and righteous thing by holding onto and protecting historical artifacts and information, ignoring the way much of the artifacts and knowledge are stolen from indigenous and original communities because of the colonialist idea that the original keepers of history don’t know how to properly store and protect it. This theme plays out really strongly between Key and Vale because Key very strongly believes the museum is the best place for history to be protected, but Vale is from a small coastal town where they’ve kept oral traditions for generations and refuses to allow Key access to certain information because she doesn’t believe the museum is doing right by then keeping it away from public access. In fact, the accessibility of history and knowledge ends up being one of the biggest conflicts of the story, and I really loved the way it was executed and the different motivations and personal histories that shaped various views.
The Memory Hunters felt like a slow read for the most part and it took me most of the year, slowly picking at it, to finish it despite my anticipation. I did really enjoy the world building and the characters, and I’m excited to see what’s next for Key and Vale. There’s also really great exploration of history and accessibility of knowledge and who has a right to cultural knowledge. I highly recommend this if you enjoy books that explore threads like that.