#BookReview: The Memory Hunters by Mia Tsai

The Memory Hunters (The Consecrated, #1) by Mia Tsai
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Genres: dark academia, dystopian, fantasy, science fiction
Series: Consecrated #1
Pages: 464
Published by Erewhon Books on July 29, 2025
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

Inception meets Indiana Jones in this propulsive fungal science 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.
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.

My Review:

I picked this up because, while I had mixed feelings about the author’s previous book, Bitter Medicine, it was her debut, andI liked it well enough to try again with this book. Howsomever, I’m left in exactly the same situation after finishing The Memory Hunters as I was at the end of Bitter Medicine, in that I have mixed feelings – which we’ll get to in a minute – but I liked it well enough to try again when her next book comes out.

The idea behind this one is fascinating. This post-apocalyptic world has developed a science, or perhaps it’s a pseudo-science as the way it all works is a bit handwavium, that allows memories to be harvested from just about anyone through a drop of blood – but only people with a special talent can do the harvesting as only their blood is capable of taking that memory and creating the drug tabs of mass production of the memory. (And if this concept sounds remotely familiar, you might be thinking of the Philip K. Dick story, “We Can Remember It for You Wholesale” or, and more likely, the movie made – and remade – from that story, Total Recall.)

The central characters in this drama are Key and Vale. Key is the memory hunter of the title, and Vale is her guardian, meaning in this situation, her bodyguard. They hunt memories for the Institute of Human Memory, rather like Indiana Jones hunts down artifacts and runs headlong into danger on his deep dives into the past. But Indy only digs in the ground, while Key digs virtually into the memories of the people who lived in that ground.

But the comparison to Indy only goes so far, because Indy, in spite of whatever his Dad might think, is an adult who is mostly adulting most of the time. Key and Vale, especially Key, not so much even though they are both in their 20s.

Vale is a scrappy fighter from an outlying area, a scholarship student at the Academy. Key, very much on the other hand, is the daughter of one of the highest ranking families in the entire country. She may WANT to be a memory hunter for the museum, she may be called to that career, she may think that is what the ancestors they all worship have given her as a mission, but Key’s family’s legacy is to essentially become the head of the religious hierarchy of the capital – and her mother is doing her damndest to shove Key into that legacy no matter what Key might want.

So Key has a history of defying orders and weaseling out of obligations because she’s privileged on all sides and has never faced any serious consequences for any of her actions. She’s always been right and she’s always pursued that rightness – or perhaps that’s righteousness – no matter what the cost might be because cost and price are things she’s never been forced to reckon with.

This is, essentially, the story of her reckoning, and all of the consequences that follow along with it. Consequences that break both her heart, her mind and very nearly her life – even as the much too loyal Vale sticks around and picks up Key’s pieces and deals with her own set of consequences and betrayals.

They belong together – and perhaps they’ve finally earned the right. But as the story closes that’s not certain and duty and obligation seem poised to snatch them up and tear them apart yet again.

Escape Rating B-: All of the ideas in this story, all of the concepts that sell the story in the blurb, sound utterly fascinating. And some of them even turn out to be. But the weakest link in taking this story from being mixedly OK to being really good is Key. Because in the first half of the story, or even a bit more, Key isn’t remotely likeable. It’s so obvious that she’s been so privileged that she’s never faced a consequence in her life, to the point where she rides roughshod over everyone around her. She desperately wants to work IN the museum but she doesn’t really want to work FOR the museum and the only way to impress the rules upon her at all is to visit their consequences on the people around her because she has the status and wealth to weasel out of anything.

Except getting around her mother. At first, it seemed like Key’s mother was going to be the ‘evil empress’ of this whole thing but the woman is just as stuck in the situation as her daughter. Mom is making the best of a not-that-great situation while Key is whining that it’s not fair and Vale, who can’t afford to miss even one paycheck because she’s sending nearly all her money back home to a family that keeps growing and a village that keeps getting flooded – is the one who suffers for Key’s high-handedness.

Key does eventually see that the whole entire world does not revolve around her, but I couldn’t help but wonder why Vale hung around for it.

The ‘tech’ or ‘tech-like’ or possibly ‘tech-lite’ behind the extraction and distribution of memories is never detailed, and that’s fine, although the story sits right on the border between SF and fantasy and it’s not a comfortable seat at all.

The extraction and distribution process, what we do know of it, particularly what we discover about the lies and corruption at the heart of it, bear a strong resemblance to the mess of monster-parts chemistry and ITS attendant corruption and political chicanery in The Tainted Cup and A Drop of Corruption by Robert Jackson Bennett, both of which I loved. However, the feel of this story with its blood and sacrifice of family lines and family memories – and the corruption wrapped around which memories get preserved and why – also smacked of Star Eater by Kerstin Hall, which is a book that keeps sticking in memory even though I didn’t really like it at all. The combination of those two books into this one is very much a part of my mixed feelings.

I could go on, but I think you probably get the picture by this point. There’s a lot of interesting stuff in here, the concept of the blood memories is wild, but the foundations of this world are a bit shortchanged to get at all the betrayals going on – and to reach the romance which I’m not 100% convinced was needed to explain the depth of Vale’s loyalty to a woman who abused that loyalty and trust for entirely too long. Which was really too bad because there’s certainly a discussion to be had about who ‘owns’ ancestral memories in the same way that there are negotiations about repatriating appropriated archaeological artifacts that deserved a bit more attention than it got.

This book is definitely a case where your reading mileage may vary. My reading mileage is still debating whether or not I’ll pick up the next book in the series.

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