Locked in with The Iron Garden Sutra

Need something new for your playlist? This week we recommend AD Sui’s The Iron Garden Sutra, a meditative horror sci-fi/fantasy and murder mystery.

I’m not usually drawn to locked room mysteries, but this book’s description checked all the right boxes to convince me: “a death monk and a team of researchers trapped aboard a spaceship of the dead encounter something beyond human comprehension.” It has all the makings of a compelling murder mystery, which is fine in itself, but thanks to the philosophical musings of its main character, Vessel Iris, and a setting that almost demands existential contemplation, it becomes something much deeper.

Vessel Iris is a monk in the distant future whose mission is to perform funeral rites for the dead so that their souls can reach their ultimate destination, according to the beliefs of her religion, the Starlit Order. “Vessels” like Iris share their minds with an AI companion, which creates a really interesting dynamic for the reader, as there is constant dialogue between the two from the start (in a tone that borders on “old married couple” at times, which I really enjoyed). Iris introduces herself to an ancient ship called the Council of Nicaea expecting to fulfill his duties to the long-dead people on board and instead finds himself faced with a group of researchers who are absolutely not dead – and a mess of bones from the hundreds of bodies they disturbed as they moved around, which he will have to sort through in order to properly bless.

Although it is a ghost ship in many ways, it turns out that the Nicaea is alive with vegetation and gardens that would once have supported the humans who lived there. And there’s apparently something else, as Iris’s AI begins to pick up strange pings from a presence on the ship, and one by one, the team of researchers begins to get spotted. As everything unfolds, Iris begins to question her faith and her purpose.

This was a really good read and I was excited to learn that it was the first in a two-book series, The Cosmic Wheel series. Sci-fi/science fantasy horror fans should definitely check this one out.