Moonflow is a fungal horror novel, written by Bitter Karella, and published by Orbit, marking the start of its horror seal, Run For It. A gloriously psychedelic novel that explores themes such as genre, beliefs and belonging through a great cast of nuanced and well-fleshed characters, a gritty tone and that excellently plays with the setting to deliver a quite unique book.

Sarah makes her living growing mushrooms; a bad harvest points her towards the lure that is the King's Breakfast, a mushroom that only grows in the depths of the Pamogo Forest. Journeying with Andy, her guide (who has a certain tendency to never shut up), they descend together into the Pamogo Forest; a trip that eventually leads them towards a reclusive and all-female cult, high on mushrooms, and with ideas about the binarism of sex that will be destabilized by the own Sarah's presence and Andy's open mind. 

Karella smartly cuts through this TERF ideology, partly while commenting and also satirizing the extreme this cult has reached; desire, disgust and mushrooms are pillars of their lives, obsessed with the feminine essence and bringing it to flesh. In their picture, somebody like Sarah can't become a woman, and it totally crashes how conservative they are in certain concepts for all the liberation they transmit with their attitude towards other aspects like nudity.
Let's be clear, splatterpunk is not exactly a subtle genre, and the message is clear about how any exclusionary ideology might rot into a cult-like extremism, shaping their members into totally different people than they were (It is interesting the role of the "recruiters" for the cult in this case).

The setting also shows its strengths through all the novel, a forest so dense that crossing it is dangerous, with many varieties of mushrooms that can influence the psyche; even the own presence guiding Sarah is a manifestation of the character that is the Pamogo Forest by itself.
The pacing is relatively fast, and mixed with a prose rich in imagery, we have a dream-like reading experience.

Moonflow is an excellent horror novel, a long-form debut by Karella that is not afraid to experiment with shock and break some boundaries to deliver an unforgettable novel. A voice to continue watching in the future!