INK HONEY BLOSSOM

For centuries, a deadly disease of unknown origins has “changed the course of history” and perpetuated the sale, kidnapping, and enslavement of countless girls. The disease only infects men, who are then called Blights, but it can be passed on to their Half-Blight children. While its full effects are only lightly sketched in the novel, it causes a pseudo-avian metamorphosis before death—beak and hind toes included. Only the Sonagachi tree’s bark, distilled into psychoactive SonaDrops, slows its progression. Distributed via the House Syndicate system and administered by “captive and caged” House Girls, the treatment causes the Blight and attendant Girl to fall into the same dream. Once connected, weeks or months of the Girl’s life are transferred to the Blight. The novel focuses on Ink, a “Top Floor Girl” who reads toBlights as they enter their dreams and has “abandoned pity somewhere beyond the walls of this place.” Resigned and weakening after years of House service, she schemes to blunt her fellow Girls’ suffering, scratches interesting words into her walls, and waits for the next man to pay “for [her] to read from a fat book of military history while he reaped the Sona’s benefits and stole months off [her] life.” One night, her world is turned upside down due to a strange artifact; instead of simply observing, she’s pulled into a Blight’s dream and takes his life force for her own. This tale of trauma, survival, and the choices people make under duress is stunningly written and deeply felt. The spare, effective worldbuilding is all the more effective for its slow unfolding. Losada’s poetic, erudite prose can be gorgeous in its own right, and it powerfully delivers the novel’s many emotional gut punches. Across the board, the characterization is masterful, with antiheroes and villains alike sketched with dexterity and depth. Impressively, even off-page characters become fully realized in others’ recollections.