The Taxonomy of Unuttered Sighs

About this book

In the vertiginous city of Oura, built into the spiraling interior of a dormant volcano, the laws of physics bow to the weight of the unspoken. When citizens suppress profound truths, griefs, or confessions, these silences do not vanish; they manifest physically as 'Larynx-Vines'—translucent, bioluminescent fungal growths. If ignored, these vines calcify into 'Silenced Stone,' burdening the hanging districts with lethal weight. Ilona Kertész is a Master Pruner, tasked with the delicate surgical removal of these emotional manifestations to keep the city afloat. However, her orderly life unravels when she discovers a vine in the depths of the lower districts unlike any taxonomy has ever recorded—a growth that doesn't just represent a single secret, but a collective cultural silence. As Ilona traces the root of this anomaly, she forms an unlikely alliance with Bayani, a historian of forgotten dialects, and Jurga, a structural engineer fighting the city's inevitable descent. Together, they must decide whether to excise the growth and save the city's physical form, or let the truth bloom, potentially collapsing Oura into the magma below.