The Unfamiliar Garden by Benjamin Percy is a superb book with an engrossing plot and well drawn characters. Well worth the read!

Ebook/Science Fiction: This is book 2 of the series and I would like to thank NetGalley for an advanced copy in lieu of an honest review.
From my guess, this book's setting is happening at the same time as book one, only in a different part of the country. While the comet let omnimetal in Michigan, alien fungus was dropped in Washington State. Now five years later, there is a reckoning.
This book has a whole new set of characters, but isn't the bloodbath book one was. The book does make me curious if the next final book will be characters from the first two all meeting, or set in another place.
This book was okay and not as spectacular as the first. In the first book, it was more of characters reactions to new wealth from the omnimetal. This book is more of a interaction to the fungus. This book really doesn't parallel the first book.

I am one of those mushroom hunters, So I loved having a specialist in that field as one of the hero of the book. This will particularly please fans of detective story and thrillers. Sadly I wasn’t so much in the mood for one. I couldn’t quite get into it, partly because of the “distancing writing style, and also I think because I didn’t like the characters very much.

Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this publication! I really enjoyed this book!

This started out really promising. If you want to lure me in, using the word 'fungi' is really effective. I find them so fascinating and weird and amazing. Anyways, the first 80% (ish) of this book had me really hooked. I thought the writing was good and the story development was good etc. Then towards the last part of the book it became something else. Somehow the ending felt sloppy or not very thought out. Things seemed to fall in to place a little too conveniently, and it just wasn't interesting anymore. There were also a few lose ends, I felt, that weren't tied up. I personally also didn't care for the POV of Isaac and Ricketts. Ricketts felt like a charicature crazy-woman/villain. It was still a solid read, but I feel the ending could be better

This story runs in parallel to the first book in the series The Ninth Metal, and is equally engrossing. In this book, fungi presumably from the same meteorites that brought omnimetal to Minnesota are flourishing the State of Washington with some alarming outcomes. There's a lot of fascinating science about mushrooms and the field of mycology. It's also about a couple who lose their young daughter, and subsequently each other. It's interesting to get inside both of their heads, as they grapple with the grief and depression, and also this fungal invasion. Nora is a Seattle police detective, and Jack is a mycologist with the University of Washington, and their paths soon cross as the body count rises. Like The Ninth Metal, the characters come together in a pleasing conclusion. These are very short books, but nice standalone stories, very well written, and it's not absolutely necessary to read them sequentially. That creep with the bowtie makes another appearance, but other than that it's a new cast. There are hints of other strange comet related happening elsewhere in the world, so I'll be watching for additional stories!

Unfortunately the copy sent to my Kindle was printed so lightly, and there was nothing I could do to darken the font, that I was unable to read it. The writing was literally maybe 3 shades darker than the background. Impossible to read without a headache.

The Unfamiliar Garden by Benjamin Percy
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I absolutely love feeling this gleeful after reading a novel. Wickedly gleeful, that is.

First, let me get something out of the way. While the first novel in the series (The Ninth Metal) shares a common event with it -- the world-changing post-meteorite chaos -- it only does so obliquely and both are self-contained. It can be read on its own without any issue.

That being said... Just wow.

It's equal parts murder thriller with an EXTREMELY cautious heroine, a heart-wrenching family tragedy with very sympathetic characters, and an all-out horror by the end.

No spoilers, folks, but this will be a must-have horror/SF for fans of Vandermeer. While it is nicely grounded and beautifully tragic for most of the novel, it goes out on a great gardening limb later on that had me whooping with joy when it got weird. I love weird. I love THIS kind of thing, especially.

In reality tho, I just want to spoil the hell out of this novel and keep chatting about it and icking out about it and ask the other huge questions such as WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE??? because I'm totally on board. I want EVERYTHING.

Yes. You might say I'm very, very excited by this one. Give me more of the corrhizae!!! :)

Percy’s “The Unfamiliar Garden” is the second book in his Comet Cycle, following on the heels of his “The Ninth Metal.” Although both novels focus on what happens to earth during an unprecedented meteor storm, the settings and characters for both are entirely separate and therefore Garden can be read quite easily as if it were a standalone novel.

Set in the lush wet world of the Puget Sound, “The Unfamiliar Garden” begins with a meteor storm that delights and scares young children. It follows (and does an absolutely extraordinary job of character development) the lives of a scarred couple, Jack and Nora, after the loss of their five-year-old daughter, Mia. They were always an odd couple, who came together not so much because of commonalities, but because sometimes opposites attract and fit together like two puzzle pieces that were always designed to fit together. Nora is a tough-as-nails Seattle police detective. Some might term her cold and emotionless. She is organized, systematic, and always focused on the smallest details. Nothing in her world is ever unplanned. Jack, a fungus-studying professor at U-Dub is the exact opposite. He is spontaneous, fun-loving, inspirational. They met one night when homeowners called about a strange homeless man scrunching back in the greenbelt and Jack’s energy and verve caused Nora to do what she never does and agree to a dinner date to taste the mushrooms he had found.

Five-year-old Mia is the joy of their lives and is generally fun-loving and spontaneous. Jack is taking her to see his research first-hand in the rainforest of the northwest. She is not into it and, when he turns his back, she disappears into thin air. There is no forgiveness from Nora. How could there be? Their marriage, thin as it was, fell to pieces. Nora stayed in the family home, wrapping all of Mia’s toys in plastic. Jack is the oddball professor who no one believes is a real professor. It would be a farce to say neither one was ever whole again. It is more like there is barely anything left for either to live for again. Five whole years go by and despair follows them like falling rain.

And, that is somewhat remarkable because the climate change wrought by the meteor storm has changed the Puget Sound’s weather from a damp, moist lichen-filled world to a five-year drought when little could grow. And, now, for whatever reason, the rains have returned and the seeds that were germinating are growing again. Jack’s research may blossom, but the world may never again be the same.

It is a horror story that Signourey Weaver would be proud of. It is a science fiction story of a possible future that is nearly incomprehensible in how different things could become from what they are now. And, what makes it work so well is the slow decisive character development that draws the reader in. This is remarkably underrated series.

This superbly plotted and characterized novel is Book 2 of Benjamin Percy's exceptional series THE COMET CYCLE. I adored Book 1, THE NINTH METAL (Release June 1 2021), and THE UNFAMILIAR GARDEN even surpasses it, focusing on my other major fascination besides Space: Fungi! I will read anything I can on this topic, so I'm highly gratified that it's the foundation of such a fantastic novel as THE UNFAMILIAR GARDEN.  Benjamin Percy is firmly in the pantheon of All-Time Favorite Authors! I've just read in immediate succession THE NINTH METAL and THE UNFAMILIAR GARDEN; now it's on to RED MOON and DEAD LANDS. Mr. Percy's work is a sure cure for any "oh, what do I read next?" blues. 

THE NINTH METAL focused on the metal deposits the massive meteor showers of Comet debris dropped on Northern Minnesota five years ago.  It looked to mining and wealth production,  to Cosmic Portent and Metaphysics.  In THE UNFAMILIAR GARDEN,  the Cosmic Portent is potential no longer: after five years of drought, the Pacific Northwest,  with its prior history of 100 rain inches annually,  is finally experiencing precipitation again, and as a beloved children's book title reminds us, "Mushrooms Grow In the Rain. " When the growth is Alien, it's a lot more than just growth: it's colonization.  The world may end, not with a bang; not with a whimper; but with a squelch. 

THE UNFAMILIAR GARDEN releases January 2022.