Desert Creatures by Kay Chronister

(Titan, 2023)

Reviewed by Niall Harrison

It’s a little unfortunate for Kay Chronister that in between last year’s US edition of Desert Creatures and this year’s UK edition a lot of people will have watched the TV adaptation of The Last of Us, and will as a result have in their minds vivid imagery of a father-daughter team, traversing wilderness and confronted with human bodies that have been transformed by other biology, to compare with this:

They came suddenly to a forest of cactus arms wrapped around each other: thin and sinewy and curling from the trunk of a limbless human form in a dust-crusted denim shirt. Rising from the arms were red flowers with wide yellow stamens […] Even from a distance the smell of the vegetation was bright, rusty, palpable […]

“Never seen one still rooted,” he murmured.

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Review from BSFA Review 22 - Download your copy here.