My thanks to Kensington Publishing and NetGalley for a free DRC of "The Memory Hunters" by Mia Tsai.
This was one of my most anticipated releases of 2025 because of the comparison to "The Fifth Season". I will be transparent and say there is one similarity : natural disasters, but not on the same scale.
"The Memory Hunters" is a Fantasy with some SF elements that had a impactful start and it promised a lot of mysteries and complex relationships.
My biggest difficulty was relating to the main character, Key. She was the embodiment of an extremely selfish, self centered rich person. But because I could relate to the second main character, Valerian, I continued my reading journey.
From the initial strong start I did feel that the narrative went in circles for a while and we learned a bit more about this world, magic and much more about the politics, but I did not felt that the story progressed in a significant way until we got closer to the end.
In conclusion I got invested in this Appalachian-influenced setting, in the intriguing world and magic, thought that some of the relationships were interesting and it was worth getting to the end.
While I an mot as satisfied as I anticipated, I would still recommend this Adult Fantasy to advanced readers of the genre that want to experience an original world with some political background and a some sapphic yearning.

I really did not like this at all and I could not keep reading it. The writing style was difficult to follow and the dialogue was not very good.