This book was not for me. I felt that there were too many disparate perspectives that didn't really align within the narrative. I'd just be getting into the story in one perspective, only to be pulled out of it to hear a different part of the story from someone else.

I can understand that this was a stylistic choice and probably really works for some people but for me there was just too much going on.

I was excited by the premise as I'm really interested in how climate is being used in literature, particularly fears around climate change so I was really looking forward to this but ultimately couldn't finish it.

This was a very intense read that drops you into the middle of it's strange world immediately and does'nt wait for you to catch up. The plot does keep moving despite the many different directions the story is pulled given it's various perspectives. I think that it was a unique and intriguing story, but it was trying to do so much and doesn't end up doing enough of any of it. I thought all the perspectives were interesting to read from, but i could not get very attached or come to a real understanding with any of them because they weren't given a lot of real estate. Still, this was a very original work tackling so many topical issues in an inventive way.

The Marigold by Andrew F. Sullivan is a creeping dystopic eco-horror about the corruption of capitalism, poor urban planning, building health code violations, and sentient mold. The story follows various citizens—a mysterious gardener, a cab driver, and two health inspectors—as a strange black mold spreads throughout Toronto.

I admit, the story does take a while to take shape due to its cast size, but, pacing issues aside, this book still lured me in with some fantastic body horror. We get freaky shrieking biomasses reminiscent of the Symbiote from Venom, which is a monster trope I’m an absolute sucker for.

Overall, this book is a Black Mirror-esque type of “thinker” sci-fi that examines the horrors of urban society through a speculative lens, delivering biting social commentary alongside a dose of slime and decay.

A near-future Toronto on the brink, The Marigold reminds me of High Rise with a touch of mushroom horror. Pacing is a bit slower than I'd like, but the creeping unease is real. I'll booktalk this to horror and thriller readers.

I really enjoyed this book. A crumbling Toronto, greedy real estate developers, a dank and dark atmosphere make a great eco fiction/horror novel. I had Jeff Vandermeer vibes while reading it. It is told from several POVs but it moves the story along and the reader learns as the characters learn. The story held my attention throughout and wasn’t predictable.

Is it a horror novel? A social commentary? A new, or revamped older, mythology? An eco-novel (if there is such a thing)? Who knows but The Marigold is definitely a different type of genre mashup! The real question is whether you will enjoy reading it.

The novel is set in a near future Toronto which sounds very close to present day New York City. The rich run the town without regard for the poor struggling to live within it. Lately, high rise buildings are collapsing. Is it incompetent builders, cheap owners using subpar products, or something else much more complex?

I liked the combination of horror with climate change. The mythology was intriguing. But I just couldn’t get past the constant social commentary. I get it. The rich are out for themselves. All Americans understand that after four years of the last president (or the robber barons of a century or so ago). Perhaps innately friendly Canadians haven’t realized it yet. Still, it was pervasive and felt overdone. It definitely adversely impacted my enjoyment of the novel. For that reason alone, The Marigold gets 3 stars from me. However, if that type of preaching to the choir doesn’t bother you and you enjoy innovative horror plots, you should pick up this book.

Thanks to ECW Press and NetGalley for a digital review copy of the book.

Andrew Sullivan loves Toronto and The Marigold is a tribute to that great city. His latest book, chock full of rich prose and vivid imagery, is about decay, urban sprawl, unchecked development, human irrelevance, and the vengeance of nature.

It’s about the Marigold, a shining jewel in the cityscape. A condo tower, the masterpiece of a developer, is developing a mysterious and spreading sludge. A health inspector discovers the foundations of the Marigold are actively rotting. Construction of a second Marigold has stopped. The lives of the residents of the condo are affected, and the humans are left to determine what will become of them in a city that seems increasingly alive.

Like the city, the cast of The Marigold is sprawling. The majority are balanced well by Sullivan and given depth in little page time. Each is a fleshed-out individual, flawed and doing their best to thrive within the shadow of the Marigold as the decay inevitably sets in.

Sullivan’s intent is to demonstrate the lives of individuals amidst an uncaring, almost sentient cityscape. Decay is inevitable as man’s hubris, but he makes a firm attempt to humanize those having their lives affected. Balancing many different perspectives and approaching the story from numerous directions is a difficult prospect, but Sullivan makes it work.

The theme of decay permeates the book. Sullivan’s descriptions of the inevitable rot setting through the metal are grotesque yet hauntingly compelling. The social commentary is obvious, with Sullivan covering the consequences of unchecked growth and how nature always reclaims its own.

The Marigold is a hauntingly beautiful tale of decay told through the eyes of the city itself, experimental and bold.

Please see the podcast review and interview below, where the hosts of Podside Picnic talk to author, Andrew F. Sullivan about The Marigold.

I was very intrigued by The Marigold's premise. Urban fantasy/sci-fi is a genre I enjoy a lot (like NK Jemisin's Great Cities duology), so seeing one set in Toronto was very intriguing to me. And Andrew F Sullivan delivered on that front. I loved this. It was weird and unsettling but had a really important message. Highly highly recommend this!

The Marigold by Andrew F Sullivan, 360 pgs, Pub date: Apr 18th
Overall ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Prose ⭐⭐⭐💫
Pacing⭐⭐
Character Development ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Scary ⭐
Gore ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Atmosphere ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Library or Buy-worthy: I'm buying a finished copy.

The Marigold by Andrew F Sullivan is a weird dark blend of political philosophy, eco-horror and rotting dystopia with a dash of cosmic occultism for good taste. I'll say right up front, if you're reading this hoping for 'The Last of Us' then this isn't that book. You have to go into The Marigold reading it on it's own merit.

Through a variety of intertwined short stories the picture of a diseased future Toronto emerges. The snap shots of different lives, and how they are affected by the Wet (a strange disease) and the Marigold family was an interesting way of creating perspective. Going into this I expected to prefer a more typical style of novel, following one character throughout but I was wrong. This style fits the world building and the slow unfolding of the cohesive plotline perfectly. The city itself becomes a character. I loved the atmosphere this author was able to create. I could almost smell the damp stink and rot. An amazing amount of character development was achieved as well within these short chapters. Every character was intriguing and fully fleshed. I liked the LGBTQ character representation. Parts of this book had a uncanny Eyes Wide Shut/ Lost Highways /Fight Club vibe that I quite enjoyed. The Diva Tarot deck Irving reads was perhaps my favorite part. The level of humor was the perfect counterbalance for all the darkness.

In general I love weird books, eco-horror and spore horror so I'm biased but I liked this book so much. It won't be everyone's cup of tea but I'm simply impressed by the originality. Good writing, dark gritty world building, raccoon symbology and a touch of black gelatinous mold growing on every surface has me following this author for future books. This book is definitely getting filed with my favorite well thought-out, top shelf weird collection. Fucking outstanding work @afsulli.

This net galley copy expired before I could read it all, I was able to get thru about 150ish pages, This was really disappointing, I was really getting into the story.

*Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for an advanced review copy. I am leaving this review voluntarily and all opinions are my own.*

This book was good, I really enjoyed the story and thought it had lots of potential. However, it is told from so many different perspectives and directions. It jumps from character to character which made the storytelling so slow.

That being said, the social commentary in this book was really on point. It was at the heart of the book and was present and consistent throughout.

I would’ve liked a bit more tension and a few less character perspectives but the idea of the story was very cool and gave Succession vibes.

#TheMarigold #NetGalley

I received this ARC from NetGalley in exchange for a fair review.

A complex and creepy metaphor for how corporate greed and wealth culture infects and consumes cities, The Marigold is a dystopian speculative horror that is layered and thematically rich. I’m also quite fond of novels that feature a giant pit.

The Marigold is a multi-POV novel (third person) that follows a young man down on his luck, a pair of public health officials inspecting the mould, a weirdo businessman, and a teenager searching for her friend. While they do, as you’d expect, meet up in a sense near the end, their stories serve to show different ways the mould (a metaphor for corporate greed) affects all levels of society, from the lower income to the richest bastards. We also get one-off chapters here and there of people living in the Marigold building, which helped fill in gaps for us readers in terms of what was happening. There is also a brief one-off mention of a pug named Ugly Humbert, which had me laughing so hard. While decidedly not a funny book, it doesn’t have brief moments of absurdity that I found humorous.

Speaking of the metaphor, though, and maybe I’m reading into it too much, but despite its literal sense in the novel, I also read the mould as the scourge of greed overtaking the city, how money, or the lust thereof, infests everything and eventually brings about destruction. In truth, I found the novel quite brilliant in that regard. When it chose to be, the prose was punchy and evocative.

The novel also breeches other themes, such as homelessness, poverty, wealth inequality, housing, climate change, underpaid work, and urban sprawl. In fact, there are even more concepts brought into this novel, and given I follow the politics of my province (and our province’s capital city) closely, there were references to some of those factors as well, though this is definitely more of a take-down than a love letter to the city.

Said city is near-future Toronto, a dystopian version. I’ve been to the city a lot, and I used to work downtown for two years. Despite that, I still wasn’t super keen on the specificity of some of the locations. In truth, and this is just an opinion, not a writing issue (as I know some readers who love this stuff); I just don’t like when books have obvious hard-ons for their real-life setting. I find it distracting, even if I know the place. A few name drops in the entire novel, sure, but listing street names and etc mean nothing to me. It’s not lazy writing, but an attempt immersion that just doesn’t work for me. Granted, it did make sense to include that stuff in this book, as it was a warped version of a particular city, a critique of what the future could hold (menacing mould aside), and it was great to see a Canadian city for once, rather than the same old NYC and LA that the US is always giving us.

That being said, the novel is bleak bleak bleak, moves at a languid pace (much like the mould), and a few of the characters aren’t very likable. The multi-POV also means we don’t get a ton of time with any of them, and, in fact, we spend the most time with the worst character of them all, though Sullivan did a great job keeping him from being too unlikeable - he felt human in his flaws.

The novel is not scary. It’s a horror in the sense that it has some squeamish stuff in it (body horror mainly), but it’s not frightening. It does have enough of a dash of Cordyceps to satisfy you if you’re wanting something like The Last of Us. It also reminded me of Finch by Jeff VanderMeer in tone and the idea of a city being overtaken by spores of some sort (albeit in a different way).

Overall, I really enjoyed it, it likely will be a book I think about from time to time (probably when I’m stuck on the DVP), it's one I'll definitely be recommending to my Toronto friends, and it's definitely worth checking out!

(I will say the epigraph at the start from Rob Ford was so funny!)

This was wild! I really got sucked into this one from the beginning. The idea of the spores, the gruesome consequences of coming in contact with them. And, really, at the center of it all is the hulking Marigold. This place is evil, that's certain, and if you dare to read this twisted tale, be ready for multiple angles looking at evil.

I liked this. I thought it was twisted, which is something I love. I love getting into the heads of characters and seeing the world through such a twisted viewpoint. This book has a lot packed in it and hops around to different points of view.

Okay, how many times did I use the word twisted in this? Lol. But, that's just the perfect description!

Out April 18, 2023!

Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with an ARC of this novel in exchange for an honest review. I was very excited to read this story but unfortunately after about 20% into the story I was just not connecting to the characters or invested in the story. The fungus/mold did seem interesting but the story just dives into the investigators going to find bodies that the mold has taken over and it was confusing on why the mold was there and why it takes over the humans. It did remind me slightly of the blob. I will say it was heavy on the Sci-fi which may be why I didn’t connect with the story but may be better for a different type of audience.

In a not-so-distant-future Toronto, a mold, simply labeled as The Wet, slowly begins to overtake buildings in a mysterious manner. At the center of it all, stands a building called The Marigold.

The book explores the evolution of The Wet by following tenants of The Marigold and people that have been affected by The Wet. While I really enjoyed the premise of this book, it just fell a little flat for me. We were introduced to quite a few characters who were killed off very soon, and that time may have been better served fleshing out the characters who made it to the end. All of the characters felt very static to me. I would have enjoyed more of a backstory to the Gardener and the lore behind the Seeds and the secret society. Of all the characters, I related to Jasmine and Cathy the best. They are two extreme sides of the same coin, and they just wanted what was best for each other.

I'd recommend this book if you're looking for a dystopian horror with some Last of Us vibes.

I'm unfortunately going to have to DNF this.
I have been trying to get through it for over a month now and I'm not even a third of the way in.
Part of me wanted to see where the story went but most of me just wasn't interested enough to pick it up over any other book I currently want to read.
If you like classic sci-fi then you will probably like it as that's what it feels like.
It's gritty.
It makes you feel like you're walking through a dark and rainy dystopian backstreet wearing soggy clothes.
Honestly that part was what made me want to carry on reading. The intended atmosphere worked very well.
I think for me the mystery wasn't intriguing enough and I couldn't find it in myself to care about any of the characters.

Fans of dystopian fiction might enjoy this novel set in Toronto. It as all the elements but unfortunately, for me at least, it felt derivative, Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC. Over to others.

I love fungal horror, I love literary fiction, I love body horror and weird just-left-of-center alternate futures. Based on all of that, I expected to love "The Marigold." It has a great cover, it has a fabulous premise, it's coming from an indie publisher, and I'd love to give the editor who crafted that synopsis a kiss--it's one of the most enticing I've read in a long time.

However, in the execution, this book falls flat.

First, let's talk grammar. This book could have benefited immensely from a heavy-handed additional round of copyedits. This author really loves commas. The sentence structures are very repetitive, and a book comprised almost entirely of six or seven clauses mashed together with commas does not make for a smooth or engaging reading experience. This book suffers from a multitude of comma splices, dangling modifiers, and random intrusions of second person. There's not a single use of a past participle in the entire thing, which is absolutely mind-boggling considering that it's written in past tense. It makes it very hard to follow what is happening, and when. I don't think I've ever seen this degree of grammatical mistakes in a traditionally published book before. Fixing these pervasive issues would bring my rating up by a full 1.5 stars immediately.

As far as plot goes, there are problems there, too. As other reviewers have commented, there are too many rotating POVs to really get attached to the characters or keep track of what's going on. In my opinion, you could have cut out either Cathy or Soda and not much would have changed. Cathy in particular felt like a police officer-shaped cardboard cutout, and her throwaway "relationship" with Jasmine was bizarre and half-baked. It changed nothing about the way the two of them interacted. [Spoiler incoming] And then, when you establish a token wlw relationship and promptly kill one of them off--that's going to read as "bury your gays," even if it's not intended.[/spoiler] Jasmine herself flips motivations and reactions like a light switch, which renders her one-dimensional and unconvincing. The chapters with the two of them felt like a slog, when they had the potential to be the most engaging. Their work was, for me, one of the more interesting aspects of the book, and I would have liked to have seen them better fleshed out.

Stanley Marigold's POV is rife with random sexual content that adds nothing to what we know about him as a character, and derails the plot completely. For example, this bizarre scene where he goes down into a subway station to hide in a corner and edge himself to pictures of his wife cucking him--what reason does a man who (as the narrative tells us again and again) has more houses than he can count have to go into a subway station to fondle himself? It's an odd choice for sure, and I would have cut it from the manuscript. It doesn't accomplish anything. I don't need to read about how this guy's genitalia shrivels from the cold. I'm good.

Of all the POVs, the one I found the most interesting and engaging was Henrietta's. I enjoyed the character of Cabeza the best, and the arcs that the two of them had were the most fleshed-out. I actually cared about what happened to them, which is more than I can say for most of the other characters. The little vignettes of other residents of the Marigold slowly succumbing to the Wet were also fun flavoring, and I think they added to the story.

Overall, I think presenting this novel as literary fiction is disingenuous. This is genre through and through--and there's nothing wrong with that! Genre isn't lesser, it's just different. When I'm told I'm getting literary fiction, I'm expecting 1) better than average writing quality, and 2) extensive engagement with complex themes that go beyond just driving the plot forward. Neither of those things are present here. This book isn't helping its case by writing checks with its jacket that the prose can't cash. Had my expectations not been set so high from the get-go, I might not have been so disappointed in the end.

More than anything, I'm let down because this book could have been a solid 4 stars--maybe even 4.5--if it had been executed differently. Instead it settled for being fine, which is one of the most frustrating things a book with great potential can do (The Latinist also comes to mind). Stephanie Feldman's "Saturnalia" (Unnamed Press, 2022) engages with similar themes--impending ecological disaster and the supernatural crimes of the wealthy elite in an alternate, near-future Philadelphia--and does it with grace and agility. I was hoping that "The Marigold" would stand up against that comp for me, but it didn't.

Overall, it was an interesting read, but not necessarily an enjoyable one. If the craft issues were addressed, I'd be happy to recommend it to other fans of fungal horror.

The blurb of this book has me excited to get into it and I did enjoy parts of it. Sadly, for me personally, I didn’t enjoy how many characters and storylines were going on as it felt a bit disjointed and I couldn’t get into any of them that well. Parts were good but overall it didn’t hold me.