“This was a forest made for dreams, or nightmares. Made for a world where the balance of oxygen in the air was different, where things felt less constrained to growing low and close to their own roots. Trees towered around me like California redwoods, some with trunks larger than an office building. Their bark was purple mottled with streaks of red and yellow, and it had a vital quality to it that the trees I knew when I was awake lacked. I pressed my hand against a trunk, the bark rough against my palm, and felt the heartbeat echoing through the tree, a thick, heavy pulse that shook my teeth in their sockets.”
Overgrowth by Mira Grant
Every time I think Mira Grant (pen name for Seanan McGuire) can’t possibly get any better, she does. It has been awhile since I have read one of her Mira Grant titles (having loved Into the Drowning Deep, Feed and Alien: Echo) so I ran to the bookstore the day this came out and snatched it up.
This book is incredible and fast paced and so thought provoking. I’m going to be unpacking it for awhile. Anastasia Miller or Stasia for short, walked into the woods when she was three years old, was grabbed by an unusual plant and died. What came out of the seedpod that took her was a young child that looked like Stasia but wasn’t. For the rest of her life, Stasia told the world exactly what she was, an alien invader from another planet. No matter how difficult this made her life, she never deviated from this narrative.
And it did make her life difficult. She became estranged from her family, picked on by her coworkers and tolerated by her housemates, accepted only for who she was by her friend and roomate Mandy and her boyfriend Graham. When a signal from the stars is released to the public, Stasia recognizes it for what it is. A warning. They are coming. They are almost here, and she can finally go home.
What follows is a fast paced story of Stasia trying to reconcile her humanity with her feelings toward her own species. She wants to protect her friends, but she always wants them convered into something more like herself. At war with herself, it’s a tense read to see which part of Stasia wins.
I loved this book so dang much. It was incredibly written with gorgeous alien descriptions and just the right amount of horror to make you uncomfortable and on edge. Mira Grant will always be on my autobuy list. I absolutely cannot wait to see what she writes next.
Of Worlds Forgotten 
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