The second novel in Percy's sci-fi series, The Comet Cycle, in which a passing comet has caused irreversible change to the growth of fungi, spawning a dangerous, invasive species in the Pacific Northwest that threatens to control the lives of humans and animals alike.
Mr. Percy has given us a smart twist on the War of the Worlds plot. In H.G. Wells’s story, microbes are the key to defeating the Martian war machines. In The Unfamiliar Garden, a different sort of weapon will be necessary. But the seeds of disaster, you might say, are quite literally already with us, just waiting for one more evolutionary jump. Like viruses.
I sat with this book’s ending for a while, mulling over how I felt about it. It seems very much in keeping with what’s come before, but the note on which it ends could be interpreted as hopeful or sinister, depending on your point of view. At first, that threw me; eventually, it clicked for me. Given that Percy is someone who doesn’t shy away from the horrific and the monstrous, the latter possibility seemed eminently plausible. And while these books are intended as standalone works, it also seems more and more likely that Percy is seeding something deeper over the course of them. And if the ending of this book means what I think it does, it offers a tantalizing glimpse of where all of this might be headed — and the alarming implications of what that means.
... a combination of Scott Smith’s The Ruins and Little Shop of Horrors, and readers who are already familiar with the signature brand of highbrow creepiness Percy showed in Red Moon and The Wilding will have a juicy anticipation of what’s coming ... This is hardly a boring book, even though its author virtually never denies himself wonky digressions ... The Unfamiliar Garden carries the freight of its nerdy passions very lightly, and always in the service of some genuinely touching human drama.
